^p (Eliiabetl) JSobins JJcnncll 



OUR HOUSE AND THE PEOPLE IN IT. i2mo, 
$1.25 net. Postage extra. 

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND("Hans Breitmann"), 
Fully illustrated, 2 vols., crown 8vo, ^5.00 net. Post- 
age, 31 cents. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK 



Our House 

And the People in It 



Our House 

And the People in It 



BY 



Elizabeth Robins Pennell 




Boston and New York 

Houghton Mifflin Company 

(Cte Bitierisitie ^xt^0 Cambriti0e 

1910 






y^K 



COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October iqio 



©C;.A*-?75096 



To 

Augustine 



Contents 

Introduction ix 

I. ^Enrietter i 

II. 'Trimmer ^3 

III. Louise 79 

IV. Our Charwomen 119 
V. Clementine 1 53 

VI. The Old Housekeeper 201 

VII. The New Housekeeper 227 

VIII. Our Beggars 251 

IX. The Tenants 289 

X. T'Z?^ garter 339 



The greater number of the following chapters appeared as articles 
in the Atlantic Monthly ^ the Pall Mall Magazine ^ and Lippincotf s. 
To the courtesy of the editors and publishers of these journals I am 
indebted for the permission to reprint them in their present form. 



Introduction 

Our finding Our House was the merest 
chance. J. and I had been hunting for it dur- 
ing weeks and months, from Chelsea to 
Blackfriars, when one day on the way to take 
a train on the Underground we saw the notice 
"To Let" in windows just where they ought 
to have been, — high above the Embankment 
and the River, — and we knew at a glance 
that we should be glad to spend the rest of our 
lives looking out of them. But something de- 
pended on the house we looked out from, and, 
while our train went without us, we hurried 
to discover it. We were in luck. It was all 
that we could have asked: as simple in archi- 
tecture, its bricks as time- stained, as the 
courts of the Temple or Gray's Inn. The front 
door opened into a hall twisted with age, the 
roof supplanted by carved corbels, the upper 
part of another door at its far end filled with 
bull's-eye glass, while three flights of time- 
worn, white stone stairs led to the windows 

ix 



Introduction 

with, behind them, a flat called Chambers, as if 
we were really in the Temple, and decorated by 
Adam, as if to bring Our House into harmony 
with the younger houses around it. For Our 
House it became on that very day, now years 
ago. Our House it has been ever since, and I 
hope we are only at the beginning of our ad- 
ventures in it. 



I 

'Enrietter 



Our House and the 
People in It 



'enrietter 



Since my experience with 'Enrietter, the 
pages of Zola and the De Goncourts have 
seemed a much more comfortable place for 
"human documents" and "realism" than the 
family circle. Her adventures in our London 
chambers make a thrilling story, but I could 
have dispensed with the privilege of enjoying 
the thrill. When your own house becomes the 
scene of the story you cannot help taking a 
part in it yourself, and the story of 'Enrietter 
was not precisely one in which I should have 
wanted to figure had it been a question of 
choice. 

It all came of believing that I could live as 
I pleased in England, and not pay the penalty. 

3 



Our House 

An Englishman's house is his castle only when 
it is run on the approved lines, and the for- 
eigner in the country need not hope for the 
freedom denied to the native. I had set out 
to engage the wrong sort of servant in the 
wrong sort of way, and the result was — 
'Enrietter. I had never engaged any sort of 
servant anywhere before, I did not much like 
the prospect at the start, and my first attempts 
in Registry Offices, those bulwarks of British 
conservatism, made me like it still less. That 
was why, when the landlady of the little Cra- 
ven Street hotel, where we waited while the 
British Workman took his ease in our cham- 
bers, offered me 'Enrietter, I was prepared 
to accept her on the spot, had not the land- 
lady, in self-defence, stipulated for the custom- 
ary formalities of an interview and references. 
The interview, in the dingy back parlour of 
the hotel, was not half so unpleasant an ordeal 
as I had expected. Naturally, I do not insist 
upon good looks in a servant, but I like her 
none the less for having them, and a costume 
in the fashion of Whitechapel could not dis- 
guise the fact that 'Enrietter was an uncom- 

4 



'Enrietter 

monly good-looking young woman; not in the 
buxom, red-cheeked way that my old reading 
of Miss Mitford made me believe as insepa- 
rable from an English maid as a pigtail from 
a Chinaman, nor yet in the anaemic way I have 
since learned for myself to be characteristic of 
the type. She was pale, but her pallor was of the 
kind more often found south of the Alps and 
the Pyrenees. Her eyes were large and blue, 
and she had a pretty trick of dropping them 
under her long lashes; her hair was black and 
crisp; her smile was a recommendation. And, 
apparently, she had all the practical virtues 
that could make up for her abominable cock- 
ney accent and for the name of 'Enrietter, by 
which she introduced herself. She did not 
mind at all coming to me as "general," though 
she had answered the landlady's advertisement 
for parlour maid. She was not eager to make 
any bargain as to what her work was, and was 
not, to be. Indeed, her whole attitude would 
have been nothing short of a scandal to the 
right sort of servant. And she was willing with 
a servility that would have offended my Ameri- 
can notions had it been a shade less useful. 

5 



Our House 

As for her references, it was in keeping with 
everything else that she should have made the 
getting them so easy. She sent me no farther 
than to another little private hotel in another 
little street leading from the Strand to the 
river, within ten minutes' walk. It was kept 
by two elderly maiden ladies who received me 
with the usual incivility of the British hotel- 
keeper, until they discovered that I had come 
not for lodging and food, which they would 
have looked upon as an insult, but merely for 
a servant's character. They unbent still fur- 
ther at 'Enrietter's name, and were roused 
to an actual show of interest. They praised 
her cooking, her coffee, her quickness, her tal- 
ent for hard work. But — and then they hesi- 
tated and I was lost, for nothing embarrasses 
me more than the Englishwoman's embar- 
rassed silence. They did manage to blurt 
out that 'Enrietter was not tidy, which I re- 
gretted. I am not tidy myself, neither is J., 
and I have always thought it important that 
at least one person in a household should have 
some sense of order. But then they also told 
me that 'Enrietter had frequently been called 

6 



'Enrietter 

upon to cook eighteen or twenty breakfasts 
of a morning, and lunches and dinners In pro- 
portion, and It struck me there might not have 
been much time left for her to be tidy In. After 
this, there was a fresh access of embarrassment 
so prolonged that I could not In decency sit 
it out, though I would have liked to make sure 
that It was due to their own difficulty with 
speech, and not to unspeakable depravity In 
'Enrletter. However, It saves trouble to be- 
lieve the best, when to believe the worst Is to 
add to one's anxieties, and as soon as I got 
home I wrote and engaged 'Enrletter and 
cheerfully left the rest to Fate. 

There was nothing to regret for a fortnight. 
Fate seemed on my side, and during two bliss- 
ful weeks 'Enrletter proved herself a paragon 
among "generals." She was prettier In her 
little white cap than In her big feathered hat, 
and her smile was never soured by the fric- 
tion of dally life. Her powers as a cook had 
not been over-estimated ; the excellence of her 
coffee had been undervalued; for her quick- 
ness and readiness to work, the elderly maiden 
ladies had found too feeble a word. There 

7. 



Our House 

was n't anything troublesome she would n't 
and did n't do, even to providing me with 
ideas when I had n't any and the butcher's, 
or greengrocer's, boy waited. And it was the 
more to her credit because our chambers were 
in a chaotic condition that would have fright- 
ened away a whole staff of the right sort of 
servants. We had just moved in, and the place 
was but half furnished. The British Workman 
still lingered, as I began to believe he always 
would, — there were times, indeed, when I 
was half persuaded we had taken our cham- 
bers solely to provide him a shelter in the day- 
time. My kitchen utensils were of the fewest. 
My china was still in the factory in France 
where they made it, and I was eating off bor- 
rowed plates and drinking out of borrowed 
cups. I had as yet next to no house-linen to 
speak of. But 'Enrietter did not mind. She 
worked marvels with what pots and pans there 
were, she was tidy enough not to mislay the 
borrowed plates and cups, she knew just 
where to take tablecloths and napkins and have 
them washed in a hurry when friends were 
misguided enough to accept my invitation to 

8 



'Enrietter 

a makeshift meal. If they were still more mis- 
guided and took me by surprise, she would 
run out for extra cutlets, or a salad, or fruit, 
and be back again serving an excellent little 
lunch or dinner before I knew she had gone. 
This was the greater comfort because I had 
just then no time to make things better. I 
was deep, beyond my habit, in journalism. 
A sister I had not seen for ten years and a 
brother-in-law recovering from nervous pros- 
tration were in town. Poor man! What he 
saw in our chambers was enough to send him 
home with his nerves seven times worse than 
when he came. J., fortunately for him, was 
in the South of France, drawing cathedrals. 
That was my one gleam of comfort. He at 
least was spared the tragedy of our first do- 
mestic venture. 

Upon the pleasure of that fortnight there 
fell only a single shadow, but it ought to have 
proved a warning, if, at the moment, I had not 
been foolish enough to find it amusing. I had 
gone out one morning directly after breakfast, 
and when I came home, long after lunch-time, 
the British Workman, to my surprise, was 

9 



Our House 

kicking his heels at my front door, though his 
rule was to get comfortably on the other side 
of it once his business at the public house round 
the corner was settled. He was more surprised 
than I, and also rather hurt. He had been ring- 
ing for the last ten minutes, he said reproach- 
fully, and nobody would let him in. After 
I had rung in my turn for ten minutes and 
nobody had let me in, I was not hurt, but 
alarmed. 

It was then that, for the first and last time 
in my knowledge of him, the British Workman 
had an inspiration : Why should n't he climb 
the ladder behind our outer front door, — we 
can "sport our oak" if we like, — get through 
the trap-door at the top to the leads, and so 
enter our little upper story, which looks for 
all the world like a ship's cabin drifted by 
mistake on to a London roof. 

I was to remember afterwards, as they say 
in novels, how, as I watched him climb, it struck 
me that the burglar or the house-breaker had 
the way made straight for him if our chambers 
ever seemed worth burgling or breaking into. 
The British Workman's step is neither soft 

10 



'Enrietter 

nor swift, but he carried through his plan and 
opened the door for me without any one being 
aroused by his irregular proceedings, which 
added considerably to my alarm. But the flat 
is small, and my suspense was short. 'En- 
rietter was in her bedroom, on her bed, sleep- 
ing like a child. I called her: she never stirred. 
I shook her : I might as well have tried to wake 
the Seven Sleepers, the Sleeping Beauty, Bar- 
barossa in the Kyfhaiiser, and all the sleepers 
who have slept through centuries of myth 
and legend rolled into one. I had never seen 
anything like it. I had never heard of any- 
thing like it except the trance which leads to 
canonization, or the catalepsy that baffles 
science. To have a cataleptic "general" to 
set off against the rapping nurse-maid of an 
acquaintance, who wanted me to take her in 
and watch her in the cause of Psychology, 
would be a triumph no doubt, but for all do- 
mestic purposes it was likely to prove a more 
disturbing drawback than untidiness. 

However, 'Enrietter, when she appeared at 
the end of an hour, did not call her midday 
sleep by any name so fine. She had been scrub- 

II 



Our House 

bing very hard — she suddenly had a faint- 
ness — she felt dazed, and, indeed, she looked 
It still — the heat, she thought, she hardly 
knew — she threw herself on her bed — she 
fell asleep. What could be simpler? And her 
smile had never been prettier, her blue eyes 
never cast down more demurely. I spoke of this 
little incident later to a friend, and was rash 
enough to talk some nonsense about catalepsy. 
One should never go to one's friends for sym- 
pathy. "More likely drink," was the only 
answer. 

Of course it was drink, and I ought to have 
known it without waiting for 'Enrietter her- 
self to destroy my illusions, which she did at 
the end of the first fortnight. The revelation 
came with her "Sunday out." To simplify 
matters, I had made it mine too. 'Enrietter, 
according to my domestic regulations, was to 
be back by ten o'clock, but to myself greater 
latitude was allowed, and I did not return 
until after eleven. I was annoyed to see the 
kitchen door wide open and the kitchen gas 
flaring, — the worst of chambers is, you can't 
help seeing everything, whether you want to 

12 



'Enrietter 

or not. 'Enrietter had been told not to wait 
up for me, and excess of devotion can be as 
trying as excess of neglect. If only that had 
been my most serious reason for annoyance! 
For when I went into the kitchen I found 'En- 
rietter sitting by the table, her arms crossed 
on it, her head resting on her arms, fast asleep; 
and what makes you laugh at noon may by 
midnight become a bore. I could n't wake 
her. I could n't move her. Again, she slept 
like a log. In the end I lost my temper, which 
was the best thing I could have done, for I 
shook her with such violence that, at last, she 
stirred in her sleep. I shook harder. She lifted 
her head. She smiled. 

"Thash a' right, mum," she said, and down 
went her head again. 

Furious, I shook her up on to her unsteady 
feet. "Go to bed," I said with a dignity alto- 
gether lost upon her. "Go at once, and in 
the dark. In your disgusting condition you are 
not fit to be trusted with a candle." 

'Enrietter smiled. "Thash a' right, mum," 
she murmured reassuringly as she reeled up 
the stairs before me. 

13 



Our House 

I must say for her that drink made her nei- 
ther disagreeable nor difficult. She carried it 
off light-heartedly and with the most perfect 
politeness. 

I had her in for a talk the next morning. I 
admit now that this was another folly. I ought 
to have sent her off bag and baggage then and 
there. But it was my first experience of the 
kind ; I did n't see what was to become of me 
if she did go; and, as I am glad to remember, 
I had the heart to be sorry for her. She was so 
young, so pretty, so capable. The indiscretion 
of her Sunday out meant for me, at the worst, 
temporary discomfort; for her, it might be the 
beginning of a life's tragedy. Her explanation 
was ready, — she was as quick at explaining 
as at everything else. I need n't tell her what 
I thought of her, it seemed; it was nothing to 
what she thought of herself. There was no ex- 
cuse. She was as disgusted as I could be. It 
was all her sister's fault. Her sister would make 
her drink a drop of brandy just before she left 
her home at Richmond. It was very wrong of 
her sister, who knew she was n't used to brandy 
and could n't stand it. 

i4 



'Enrietter 

The story would not have taken in a child, 
but as it suited me to give her another trial, 
it was easier to make-believe to believe. Be- 
fore the interview was over I ventured a little 
good advice. I had seen too often the draggled, 
filthy, sexless creatures drink makes of women 
in London, and 'Enrietter was worth a bet- 
ter end. She listened with admirable patience 
for one who was already, as I was only too 
quickly to learn, so far on the way to the Lon- 
don gutter that there was no hope of holding 
her back, as much as an inch, by words or 
kindness. 

The next Sunday 'Enrietter stayed in and 
went to bed sober. It was the day after — a 
memorable Monday — that put an end to all 
compromise and make-believe. I had promised 
to go down to Cambridge, to a lunch at one of 
the colleges. At the English Universities time 
enters so little into the scheme of existence 
that one loses all count of it, and I was pretty 
sure I should be late in getting home. I said, 
however, that I should be back early in the 
afternoon, and I took every latch-key with me, 
— as if the want of a latch-key could make a 

15 



Our House 

prison for so accomplished a young woman 
as 'Enrietter! The day was delightful, the 
weather as beautiful as it can be in an English 
June, and the lunch gay. And afterwards there 
was the stroll along the "Backs," and, in the 
golden hour before sunset, afternoon tea in the 
garden, and I need not say that I missed my 
train. It was close upon ten o'clock when I 
turned the key in my front door. The flat 
was in darkness, except for the light that al- 
ways shines into our front windows at night 
from the lamps on the Embankment and 
Charing Cross Bridge. There was no sign of 
'Enrietter, and no sound of her until I had 
pulled my bell three or four times, and shouted 
for her in the manner I was taught as a child 
to consider the worst sort of form, not to say 
vulgar. But it had its efi'ect. A faint voice 
answered from the ship's cabin upstairs, 
"Coming, mum." 

"Light the gas and the lamp," I said when 
I heard her in the hall. 

The situation called for all the light I could 
get. From the methodical way she set about 
lighting the hall gas I knew that, at least, she 

i6 



'Enrietter 

could not be reeling. Then she came in and 
lit the lamp, and I saw her. 

It was a thousand times worse than reeling, 
and my breath was taken away with the hor- 
ror of it. For there she stood, in a flashy pink 
dressing-gown that was a disgrace in itself, 
her face ghastly as death, and all across her 
forehead, low down over one of the blue eyes, 
a great, wide, red gash. 

Before I had time to pull myself together 
'Enrietter had told her story, — so poor a story 
it showed how desperate now was her case. 
She had been quiet all morning — no one had 
come — she had got through the extra work I 
left with her. About three the milkman rang. 
A high wind was blowing. The door, when 
she opened it, banged in her face and cut her 
head open. And it had bled! She had only 
just succeeded in stopping it. One part of her 
story, anyway, was true beyond dispute. That 
terrible, gaping wound spoke for itself. 

I did not know what to do. I was new in 
the neighbourhood, and my acquaintance with 
doctors anywhere is slight. But I could not 
turn her into the street, I could not even 

17 



Our House 

leave her under my own roof all night, like 
that. Something had to be done, and I ran 
downstairs to consult the old Housekeeper, 
who, after her half century in the Quarter, 
might be expected to know how to meet any 
emergency. 

More horrors awaited me in her room, — 
like Macbeth, I was supping full with horrors, 
— for she had another story to tell, and, as 
I listened, the ghastly face upstairs, with the 
gaping red wound, became a mere item in an 
orgy more appropriate to the annals of the 
Rougon-Macquarts than, I devoutly trust, to 
ours. I cannot tell the story as the House- 
keeper told it. She had a trick of going into 
hysterics at moments of excitement, and as 
in all the years she had been in charge she had 
never seen such goings on, it followed that in 
all those years, she had never been so hysteri- 
cal. She gasped and sobbed out her tale of 
horrors, and, all the while, her daughter, who 
was in the profession, sat apart, and, in the ex- 
asperating fashion of the chorus of a Greek 
play, kept up a running commentary emphasiz- 
ing the points too emphatic to need emphasis. 

i8 



'Enrietter 

To tell the story in my own way: I was 
hardly out of the house when 'Enrietter had 
a visit from a "gentleman," — that was the 
Housekeeper's description of him, and, as 
things go in England, he was a gentleman, 
which makes my story the more sordid. How 
'Enrietter had sent him word the coast was 
clear I do not pretend to say, though I believe 
the London milkman has a reputation as the 
Cupid's Postman of the kitchen, and I re- 
called afterwards two or three notes 'Enrietter 
had received from her sister by district mes- 
senger, — the same sister, no doubt, who gave 
her the drop of brandy. Towards noon 'Enri- 
etter and her gentleman were seen to come 
downstairs and go out together. Where they 
went, what they did during the three hours 
of their absence, no one knew, — no one will 
ever know. Sometimes, in looking back, the 
greatest horrors to me are the unknown chap- 
ters in the story of that day's doings. They 
were seen to return, about three, in a hansom. 
The gentleman got out, unsteadily. 'Enrietter 
followed and collapsed in a little heap on the 
pavement. He lifted her, and staggered with 

19 



Our House 

her in by the door and up the three long flights 
of stairs to our chambers. 

And then — I confess, at this point even 
now my anger gets the better of me. Every 
key for my front door was In my pocket, — 
women were still allowed pockets in those days. 
There was no possible way in which they could 
have got in again, had not that gentleman 
climbed the ladder up which I had watched 
the British Workman not so many days be- 
fore, and, technically, broken into my place, 
and then come down the little stairway and 
let 'Enrietter in. A burglar would have seemed 
clean and honest compared to the gentle- 
man housebreaking on such an errand. My 
front door was heard to bang upon them 
both, and I wish to Heaven it had been the 
last sound heard from our chambers that day. 
For a time all was still. Then, of a sudden, 
piercing screams rang through the house and 
out through the open windows into the scan- 
dalized Quarter. There was a noise of heavy 
things falling or thrown violently down, curses 
filled the air; as the Housekeeper told it to me, 
it was like something out of Morrison's "Mean 

20 



'Enrietter 

Streets" or the "Police-Court Gazette," and 
the dreadful part of it was that, no doubt, I 
was being held responsible for it! At last, loud 
above everything else, came blood-curdling 
cries of "Murder! Murder! Help! Murder!" 
There was not a window of the many over- 
looking my back rooms that was not filled 
with terrified neighbours. The lady in the 
chambers on the floor below mine set up a 
cry of her own for the police. The clerks from 
the Church League and from the Architect's 
office were gathered on the stairs. A nice 
reputation I must be getting in the house 
before my first month in it was up! 

The Housekeeper, with a new attack of 
hysterics, protested that she had not dared 
to interfere, though she had a key, nor could 
she give it to a policeman without my author- 
ity — she knew her duty. The Greek Chorus 
repeated, without hysterics but with careful 
elocution, that the Housekeeper could not go 
in nor fetch the police without my authority — 
she knew her duty. And so, the deeds that 
were done within my four walls on that beau- 
tiful June afternoon must remain a mystery. 

21 



Our House 

The only record is the mark 'Enrietter will 
carry on her forehead with her to the grave. 
The noise gradually ceased. The neighbours, 
one by one, left the windows, the lady below 
disappeared into her flat. The clerks went 
back to work. And the Housekeeper crept 
into her rooms for the cup of tea that saves 
every situation for the Englishwoman. She 
had not finished when there came a knock at 
the door. She opened it, and there stood a 
gentleman — the gentleman — anyone could 
see he was a gentleman by his hat — and 
he told her his story : the third version of the 
affair. He was a medical student, he said. 
He happened to be passing along the Strand 
when, just in front of Charing Cross, a cab 
knocked over a young lady. She was badly 
hurt, but, as a medical student, he knew 
what to do. He put her into another cab 
and brought her home; he saw to her in- 
juries; but now he could stay no longer. She 
seemed to be quite alone up there. Her con- 
dition was serious ; she should not be left alone. 
And he lifted his hat and was gone. But the 
Housekeeper dare n't intrude, even then; she 

22 



'Enrietter 

knew her place and her duty. She knew her 
place and her duty, the Greek Chorus echoed, 
and the end of her story brought me to just 
where I was at the beginning. Upon one 
point the gentleman was right, and that was 
the condition of the "young lady" as long as 
that great wide gash still gaped open. The 
Housekeeper, practical for all her hysterics, 
sobbed out "The Hospital." "The Hospital!" 
echoed the Greek Chorus, and I mounted the 
three flights of stairs for 'Enrietter. 

I tied up her head. I made her exchange the 
shameless pink dressing-gown for her usual 
clothes. I helped her on with her hat, though 
I thought she would faint before she was 
dressed. I led her down the three flights of 
stairs into the street, across the Strand, to the 
hospital. By this time it was well past eleven. 

So far I had n't had a chance to think of ap- 
pearances. But one glance from the night-sur- 
geon at the hospital, and it was hard to think 
of anything else. He did not say a word more 
than the case demanded, but his behaviour 
to me was abominable all the same. And I 
cannot blame him. There was I, decently 

23 



Our House 

dressed I hope, for I had put on my very best 
for Cambridge, in charge of a young woman 
dressed anyhow and with a broken head. It 
was getting on toward midnight. The Strand 
was a stone's throw away. Still, in his place, 
I hope I should have been less brutal. 

As for 'Enrietter, she had plenty of pluck, 
if she had no morals. She bore the grisly 
business of having her head sewn up with the 
nerve of a martyr. She never flinched, she 
never moaned; she was heroic. When it was 
over, the night-surgeon told her — he never 
addressed himself to me if he could help it — 
that it was a nasty cut and must be seen to 
again the next day. The right eye had es- 
caped by miracle, it might yet be affected. 
What was most important at this stage was 
perfect quiet, perfect repose. It was essential 
that she should sleep, — she must take some- 
thing to make her sleep. When I asked him 
meekly to give me an opiate for her, he an- 
swered curtly that that was not his affair. 
There was a chemist close by, I could get 
opium pills there, and he turned on his heel. 

I took 'Enrietter home. I saw her up the 
24 



'Enrietter 

three long flights of stairs to our chambers, 
the one little stairway to her bedroom, and 
into her bed. I walked down the little stair- 
way and the three long flights. I went out 
into the night. I hurried to the chemist's. 
It was past midnight, an hour when decent 
women are not expected to wander alone in 
the Strand, and now I was conscious that 
things might look queer to others. I skulked 
in the darkest shadows like a criminal. I 
bought the pills. I came home. For the fourth 
time I toiled up the three long flights of stairs 
and the one little stairway. I gave 'Enrietter 
her pills. I put out her light. I shut her in 
her room. 

• And then? Why, then, I hadn't taken an 
opium pill. I was n't sleepy. I did n't want 
to sleep. I wanted to find out. I did what I 
have always thought no self-respecting person 
would do. But to be mixed up in 'Enrietter's 
aff'airs was not calculated to strengthen one's 
self-respect. And without a scruple I went 
into the kitchen and opened every drawer, 
cupboard, and box, and read every letter, 
every scrap of paper, I could lay my hands 

25 



Our House 

on. There was n't much all told, but It was 
enough. For I found out that the medical 
student, the gentleman, was a clerk In the 
Bank of England, — I should like him to read 
this and to know that I know his name and 
have his reputation In my hands. I found out 
that 'Enrletter was his "old woman," and a 
great many other things she ought not to have 
been. I found out that I had not dined once 
with my friends that he had not spent the 
evening with her. I found out that he had 
kept count of my every engagement with 
greater care than I had myself. I found out 
that he had spent so many hours In my kitchen 
that the question was what time he had left 
for the Bank of England. And I found such 
an assortment of flasks and bottles that I 
could only marvel how 'Enrletter had man- 
aged to be sober for one minute during the 
three weeks of her stay with me. 

I sent for a charwoman the next morning. 
She was of the type now rapidly dying out 
in London, and more respectable. If possible, 
than the Housekeeper. Her manner went 
far to restore my self-respect, and this was the 

26 



'Enrietter 

only service I could ask of her, her time being 
occupied chiefly in waiting upon 'Enrietter. 
In fairness, I ought to add that 'Enrietter was 
game to the last. She got up and downstairs 
somehow, she cooked the lunch, she would 
have waited on the table, bandaged head and 
all, had I let her. But the less I saw of her, 
the greater her chance for the repose pre- 
scribed by the night-surgeon. Besides, she and 
her bandaged head were due at the hospital. 
This time she went in charge of the char- 
woman, whose neat shabby shawl and bon- 
net, as symbols of respectability, were more 
than sufficient to keep all the night or day 
surgeons of London in their place. They re- 
turned with the cheerful intelligence that 
matters were much worse than was at first 
thought, that 'Enrietter's eye was in serious 
danger, and absolute quiet in a darkened room 
was essential, that lotions must be applied 
and medicines administered at regular inter- 
vals, — in a word, that our chambers, as long 
as she remained in them, must be turned into a 
nursing home, with myself as chief nurse, which 
was certainly not what I had engaged her for. 

2^ 



Our House 

I went upstairs, when she was in bed again, 
and told her so. She must send for some one, 
I did not care whom, to come and take her off 
my hands at once. My temper was at boiling- 
point, but not for the world would I have 
shown it or done anything to destroy 'Enri- 
etter's repose and so make matters worse, 
and not be able to get rid of her at all. As 
usual, her resources did not fail her; she was 
really wonderful all through. There was an 
old friend of her father's, she said, who was 
in the Bank of England — I knew that friend; 
he could admit her into a hospital of which he 
was a patron — Heaven help that hospital ! 
But I held my peace. I even wrote her letter 
and sent it to the post by the charwoman. 
'Enrietter's morals were beyond me, but my 
own comfort was not. 

I do not know whether the most astonish-' 
ing thing in all the astonishing episode was 
not the reappearance of the old friend of her 
father's in his other role of medical student. 
I suppose he did not realize how grave 'Enri- 
etter's condition was. I am sure he did not 
expect anything less than that I should open 

28 



'Enrietter 

the door for him. But this was what happened. 
His visit was late, the charwoman had gone for 
the night, and I was left to do all 'Enrietter's 
work myself. He did not need to tell me who 
he was, — his face did that for him, — but he 
stammered out the wretched fable of the 
medical student, the young lady, and the cab. 
She was quite alone when he left her, he added, 
and he was worried, and, being in the neigh- 
bourhood, he called in passing to enquire if 
the young lady were better, and if there were 
now some one to take care of her. His self- 
confidence came back as he talked. 

"Your story is extremely interesting," I 
told him, "and I am especially glad to hear 
it, because my cook" — with a vindictive 
emphasis on the cook — " has told me quite 
a different one as to how she came by her 
broken head. Now — " 

He was gone. He threw all pretence to the 
winds and ran downstairs as if the police 
were at his heels, as I wished they were. I 
could not run after him without making a 
second scandal in the house; and if I had 
caught him, if I had given him in custody for 

29 



Our House 

trespass, as I was told afterwards I might have 
done, how would I have liked figuring in the 
Police Courts? 

Curiously, he did have Influence with the 
hospital, which shall be nameless. He did get 
a bed there for 'Enrietter the next morning. 
It may be that he had learned by experience 
the convenience to himself of having a hospi- 
tal, as It were. In his pocket. But the arrange- 
ments were by letter; he did not risk a second 
meeting, and I asked 'Enrietter no ques- 
tions. For my own satisfaction, I went with 
her to the hospital: a long, melancholy drive 
in a four-wheeler, 'Enrietter with ghastly face, 
more dead than alive. I delivered her Into the 
hands of the nurses. I left her there, a band- 
aged wreck of the pretty 'Enrietter who had 
been such an ornament to our chambers. 
And that was the last I saw of her, though not 
the last I heard. 

A day or two later her sister came to pack 
up her belongings, — a young woman with a 
vacant smile, a roving eye, and a baby In her 
arms. I had only to look at her to know that 
she was n't the sort of sister to force anything 

30 



'Enrietter 

on anybody, much less on 'Enrietter. And 
yet I went to the trouble of reading her a little 
lecture. 'Enrietter's morals were beyond me, 
but I am not entirely without a conscience. 
The sister kept on simpering vacantly, while 
her eyes roved from print to print on the walls 
of the dining-room where the lecture was de- 
livered, and the baby stared at me with por- 
tentous solemnity. 

Then, about three weeks after the sister's 
visit, I heard from 'Enrietter herself. She 
wrote with her accustomed politeness. She 
begged my pardon for troubling me. She had 
left the hospital. She was at home in Rich- 
mond, and she had just unpacked the trunk 
the sister had packed for her. Only one thing 
was missing. She would be deeply obliged if 
I would look in the left-hand drawer of the 
kitchen dresser and send her the package of 
cigarettes I would find there. And she was 
mine, "Very respectfully." 

This is the story of 'Enrietter's adventures 
in our chambers, and I think whoever reads 
it will not wonder that I fought shy afterwards 
of the English servant who was not well on 

31 



Our House 

the wrong side of forty and whose thirst could 
not be quenched with tea. The real wonder 
is that I had the courage to risk another maid 
of any kind. Women have been reproached 
with their love of gossiping about servants 
since time immemorial, and I do not know for 
how long before that. But when I remember 
'Enrietter, I do not understand how we have 
the heart ever to gossip about anything else. 
What became of her, who can say? Sometimes, 
when I think of her pretty face and all that 
was good in her, I can only hope that the next 
orgy led to still worse things than a broken 
head, and that Death saved her from the 
London streets. 



II 

Trimmer 



II 



TRIMMER 



Until I began my search for an elderly wo- 
man who never drank anything stronger than 
tea, I had supposed it was the old who could 
find nobody to give them work. But my trouble 
was to find somebody old enough to give mine 
to. The "superior domestics" at the Registry 
Ofiices were much too well trained to confess 
even to middle age, and probably I should be 
looking for my elderly woman to this day, 
had not chance led Trimmer one afternoon 
to an office which I had left without hope in 
the morning. As her years could supply no 
possible demand save mine, she was sent at 
once to our chambers. 

To tell the truth, as soon as I saw her, I 
began to doubt my own wisdom. I had never 
imagined anybody quite so respectable. In her 
neat but rusty black dress and cape, her hair 
parted and brought carefully down over her 

35 



Our House 

ears, her bonnet tied under her chin, her 
reticule hanging on her arm, she was the in- 
carnation of British respectabiHty; "the very- 
type," the "old Master Rembrandt van Rijn, 
with three Baedeker stars," I could almost 
hear Mr. Henry James describing her; and all 
she wanted was to belong "beautifully" to 
me. But then she looked as old as she looked 
respectable, — so much older than I meant her 
to look, — old to the point of fragility. She 
admitted to fifty-five, and when mentally I 
added four or five years more, I am sure I was 
not over generous. Her face was filled with 
wrinkles, her skin was curiously delicate, and 
she had the pallor that comes from a steady 
diet of tea and bread and sometimes butter. 
The hands through the large, carefully mended 
black gloves showed twisted and stiff, and it 
was not easy to fancy them making our beds 
and our fires, cooking our dinners, dusting 
our rooms, opening our front door. We needed 
some one to take care of us, and it was plain 
that she was far more in need of some one to 
take care of her, — all the plainer because 
of her anxiety to prove her capacity for work. 

36 



Trimmer 

There was nothing she could not do, nothing 
she would not do if I were but to name it. 
"I can cut about, mum, you'll see. Oh, I'm 
bonny!" And the longer she talked, the better 
I knew that during weeks, and perhaps months, 
she had been hunting for a place, which at 
the best is wearier work than hunting for a 
servant, and at the worst leads straight to the 
workhouse, the one resource left for the honest 
poor who cannot get a chance to earn their 
living, and who, by the irony of things, dread 
it worse than death. 

With my first doubt I ought to have sent 
her away. But I kept putting off the uncom- 
fortable duty by asking her questions, only 
to find that she was irreproachable on the 
subject of alcohol, that she preferred "beer- 
money" to beer, that there was no excuse not 
to take her except her age, and this, in the face 
of her eagerness to remain, I had not the 
pluck to make. My hesitation cost me the 
proverbial price. Before the interview was 
over I had engaged her on the condition that 
her references were good, as of course they were, 
though she sent me for them to the most 

37 



Our House 

unexpected place in the world, a corset and 
petticoat shop not far from Leicester Square. 
Through the quarter to which all that is 
disreputable in Europe drifts, where any sort 
of virtue is exposed to damage beyond re- 
pair, she had carried her respectability and 
emerged more respectable than ever. 

She came to us with so little delay that I 
knew better than ever how urgent was her 
case. Except for the providentially short 
interval with 'Enrietter, this was my first 
experience of the British servant, and it was 
enough to make me tremble. It was im- 
possible to conceive of anything more British. 
Her print dress, changed for a black one in the 
afternoon, her white apron and white cap, be- 
came in my eyes symbolic. I seemed, in her, 
to face the entire caste of British servants 
who are so determined never to be slaves that 
they would rather fight for their freedom to be 
as slavish as they always have been. She knew 
her place, and what is more, she knew ours, 
and meant to keep us in it, no matter whether 
we liked or did not like to be kept there. I 
was the Mistress and J. was the Master, and 

38 



Trimmer 

if, with our American notions, we forgot it, she 
never did, but on our slightest forgetfulness 
brought us up with a round turn. So correct, 
indeed, was her conduct, and so respectable 
and venerable was her appearance, that she 
produced the effect in our chambers of an old 
family retainer. Friends would have had us 
train her to address me as "Miss Elizabeth," 
or J. as "Master J.," and pass her off for the 
faithful old nurse who is now so seldom met 
out of fiction. 

For all her deference, however, she clung 
obstinately to her prejudices. We might be as 
American in our ways as we pleased, she would 
not let us off one little British bit in hers. 
She never presumed unbidden upon an obser- 
vation, and if I forced one from her she in- 
variably begged my pardon for the liberty. 
She thanked us for everything, for what we 
wanted as gratefully as for what we did not 
want. She saw that we had hot water for our 
hands at the appointed hours. She compelled 
us to eat Yorkshire pudding with our sirloin 
of beef, and bread-sauce with our fowl, — in 
this connection how can I bring myself to say 

39 



Our House 

chicken? She could never quite forgive us for 
our indifference to "sweets"; and for the 
daily bread-and-butter puddings and tarts we 
would not have, she made up by an orgy of 
tipsy cakes and creams when anybody came 
to dine. How she was reconciled to our per- 
sistent refusal of afternoon tea, I always won- 
dered; though I sometimes thought that, by 
the stately function she made of it in the 
kitchen, she hoped to atone for this worst of 
our American heresies. 

Whatever she might be as a type, there was 
no denying that as a servant she had all the 
qualities. She was an excellent cook, despite 
her flamboyant and florid taste in sweets ; she 
was sober, she was obliging, she had by no 
means exaggerated her talent for "cutting 
about," and I never ceased to be astonished 
at the amount she accomplished. The fire was 
always burning when we got down in the 
morning, breakfast always ready. Beds were 
made, lunch served, the front door opened, 
dinner punctual. I do not know how she did 
it all, and I now remember with thankfulness 
our scruples when we saw her doing it, and the 

40 



Trimmer 

early date at which we supplied her with an 
assistant in the shape of a snuffy, frowzy old 
charwoman. The revelation of how much too 
much remained for her even then came only 
when we lost her, and I was obliged to look 
below the surface. While she was with us, 
the necessity of looking below never occurred 
to me; and as our chambers had been done up 
from top to bottom just before she moved into 
them, they stood her method on the surface 
admirably. 

This method perhaps struck me as the more 
complete because it left her the leisure for a 
frantic attempt to anticipate our every wish. 
She tried to help us with a perseverance that 
was exasperating, and as her training had 
taught her the supremacy of the master in 
the house, it was upon J. that her efforts were 
chiefly spent. I could see him writhe under 
her devotion, until there were times when I 
dreaded to think what might come of it, all 
the more because my sympathies were so 
entirely with him. If he opened his door, she 
rushed to ask what he wanted. A spy could 
not have spied more diligently; and as in our 

41 



Our House 

small chambers the kitchen door was almost 
opposite his, he never went or came that she 
did not know it. He might be as short with 
her as he could, and in British fashion order 
her never to come into the studio, but it was 
no use; she could not keep out of it. Each 
new visitor, or letter, or message, was an ex- 
cuse for her to flounder in among the port- 
folios on the floor and the bottles of acid in 
the corner, at the risk of his temper and her 
life. On the whole, he bore it with admirable 
patience. But there was one awful morning 
when he hurried into my room, slammed the 
door after him, and in a whisper said, — he 
who would not hurt a fly, — "If you don't 
keep that woman out of my room, I '11 wring 
her neck for her ! " 

I might have spared myself any anxiety. 
Had J. offered to her face to wring her neck, 
she would have smiled and said, "That's all 
right, sir! Thank you, sir!" For, with Trim- 
mer, to be "bonny" meant to be cheerful 
under any and all conditions. So long as her 
cherished traditions were not imperilled, she 
had a smile for every emergency. It was 

42 



Trimmer 

characteristic of her to allow me to christen 
her anew the first day she was with us, and not 
once to protest. We could not bring ourselves 
to call her Lily, her Christian name, so inap- 
propriate was it to her venerable appearance. 
Her surname was even more impossible, for 
she was the widow of a Mr. Trim. She her- 
self — helpful from the beginning — suggested 
"cook." But she was a number of things be- 
sides, and though I did not mind my friends 
knowing that she was as many persons in one 
as the cook of the Nancy Bell, it would have 
been superfluous to remind them of it on 
every occasion. When, at my wits' end, I 
added a few letters and turned the impossible 
Trim into Trimmer, she could not have been 
more pleased had I made her a present, and 
from that moment she answered to the new 
name as if born to it. 

The same philosophy carried her through 
every trial and tribulation. It was sure to be 
all right if, before my eyes and driving me to 
tears, she broke the plates I could not replace 
without a journey to Central France, or if in 
the morning the kitchen was a wreck after the 

43 



Our House 

night Jimmy, our unspeakable black cat, had 
been making of it. Fortunately he went out as 
a rule for his sprees, realizing that our estab- 
lishment could not stand the wear and tear. 
When he chanced to stay at home, I have come 
down to the kitchen In the morning to find 
the clock ticking upside down on the floor, 
oranges and apples rolling about, spoons and 
forks under the table, cups and saucers in 
pieces, and Jimmy on the table washing his 
face. But Trimmer would meet me with a 
radiant smile and would put things to rights, 
while Jimmy purred at her heels, as if both 
were rather proud of the exploit, certain that 
no other cat in the world could, "all by his 
lone" and in one night, work such ruin. 

After all, it was a good deal Trimmer's 
fault if we got Into the habit of shifting disa- 
greeable domestic details on to her shoulders, 
she had such a way of offering them for the 
purpose. It was she who, when Jimmy's orgies 
had at last undermined his health and the 
"vet" prescribed a dose of chloroform as the 
one remedy, went to see it administered, 
coming back to tell us of the " beautiful 

44 



Trimmer 

corpse" he had made. It was she who took 
our complaints to the Housekeeper downstairs, 
and met those the other tenants brought 
against us. It was she who bullied stupid 
tradesmen and stirred up Idle workmen. It 
was she, in a word, who served as domestic 
scapegoat. And she never remonstrated. I 
am convinced that If I had said, " Trimmer, 
there's a Hon roaring at the door," she would 
have answered, "That's all right, mum! 
thank you, mum!" and rushed to say that we 
were not at home to him. As It happens, I 
know how she would have faced a burglar, for 
late one evening when I was alone in our 
chambers, I heard some one softly trying to 
turn the knob of the door of the box-room. 
What I did was to shut and bolt the door at the 
foot of our little narrow stairway, thankful that 
there was a door there that could be bolted. 
What Trimmer did, when she came home ten 
minutes later and I told her, "There's a bur- 
glar In the box-room," was to say, "Oh, Is there, 
mum ? thank you, mum. That's all right. I'll 
just run up and see"; and she lit her candle 
and walked right up to the box-room and un- 

45 



Our House 

locked and opened the door. Out flew William 
Penn, furious with us because he had let him- 
self be shut in where nobody had seen him 
go, and where he had no business to have gone. 
He was only the cat, I admit. But he might 
have been the burglar for all Trimmer knew, 
and — what then ? 

As I look back and think of these things, I 
am afraid we imposed upon her. At the time, 
we had twinges of conscience, especially when 
we caught her "cutting about" with more 
than her usual zeal. She was not designed by 
nature to "cut about" at all. To grow old 
with her meant "to lose the glory of the 
form." She was short, she had an immense 
breadth of hip, and she waddled rather than 
walked. When, in her haste, her cap would 
get tilted to one side, and she would give a 
smudge to her nose or her cheek, she was 
really a grotesque little figure, and the twinges 
became acute. To see her "cutting about" 
so unbecomingly for us at an age when she 
should have been allowed, unburdened, to 
crawl towards death, was to shift the heaviest 
responsibility to our shoulders and to make us 

46 



Trimmer 

the one barrier between her and the work- 
house. We could not watch the tragedy of 
old age in our own household without playing 
a more important part in it than we liked. 

Her cheerfulness was the greater marvel 
when I learned how little reason life had given 
her for it. In her rare outbursts of confidence, 
with excuses for the liberty, she told me that 
she was London born and bred, that she had 
gone into service young, and that she had 
married before she was twenty. I fancy she 
must have been pretty as a girl. I know she 
was "bonny," and "a fine one" for work, and 
I am not surprised that Trim wanted to marry 
her. He was a skilled plasterer by trade, got 
good wages, and was seldom out of a job. 
They had a little house in some far-away mean 
street, and though the children who would 
have been welcome never came, there was 
little else to complain of. 

Trim was good to her, that is, unless he was 
in liquor, which I gathered he mostly was. 
He was fond of his glass, sociable-like, and 
with his week's wages in his pocket, could not 
keep away from his pals in the public. Trim- 

47 



Our House 

mer's objection to beer was accounted for 
when I discovered that Trim's fondness for it 
often kept the little house without bread and 
filled it with curses. There were never blows. 
Trim was good, she reminded me, and the 
liquor never made him wicked, — only made 
him leave his wife to starve, and then curse her 
for starving. She was tearful with gratitude 
when she remembered his goodness in not 
beating her; but when her story reached the 
day of his tumbling off a high ladder — the 
beer was in his legs — and being brought back 
to her dead, it seemed to me a matter of re- 
joicing. Not to her, however, for she had to 
give up the little house and go into service 
again, and she missed Trim and his curses. 
She did not complain. She always found good 
places, and she adopted a little boy, a sweet 
little fellow, like a son to her, whom she sent 
to school and started in life, and had never 
seen since. But young men will be young men, 
and she loved him. She was very happy at 
the corset and petticoat shop, where she lived 
while he was with her. After business hours 
she was free, for apparently the responsibility 

48 



Trimmer 

of being alone in a big house all night was as 
simple for her as braving a burglar in our 
chambers. The young ladies were pleasant, 
she was well paid. Then her older brother's 
wife died and left him with six children. What 
could she do but go and look after them when 
he asked her.^ 

He was well-to-do, and his house and firing 
and lighting were given him in addition to 
high wages. He did not pay her anything, of 
course, — she was his sister. But it was a com- 
fortable home, the children were fond of her, 
— and also of her cakes and puddings, — 
and she looked forward to spending the rest 
of her days there. But at the end of two years 
he married again, and when the new wife came, 
the old sister went. This was how it came 
about that, without a penny in her pocket, 
and with nothing save her old twisted hands 
to keep her out of the workhouse, she was 
adrift again at an age which made her unde- 
sirable to everybody except foolish people like 
ourselves, fresh from the horrors of our expe- 
rience with 'Enrietter. It never occurred to 
Trimmer that there was anything to complain 

49 



Our House 

of. For her, all had always been for the best 
in the best of all possible worlds. That she 
had now chanced upon chambers and two 
people and one dissipated cat to take care of, 
and more to do than ought to have been asked 
of her, was but another stroke of her invariable 
good luck. 

She had an amazing faculty of turning all 
her little molehills into mountains of pleasure. 
I have never known anything like the joy she 
got from her family, though I never could 
quite make out why. She was inordinately 
proud of the brother who had been so ready 
to get rid of her; the sister-in-law who had re- 
placed her was a paragon of virtue; the nieces 
were so many infant phenomena, and one 
Sunday when, with the South London world 
of fashion, they were walking in the Embank- 
ment Gardens, she presumed so far as to bring 
them up to our chambers to show them off to 
me, and the affectionate glances she cast upon 
their expansive lace collars explained that she 
still had her uses in the family. There was 
also a cousin whom, to Trimmer's embarrass- 
ment, I often found in our kitchen; but much 

50 



Trimmer 

worse than frequent visits could be forgiven 
her, since it was she who, after Jimmy's in- 
glorious end, brought us William Penn, a 
pussy then small enough to go into her coat- 
pocket, but already gay enough to dance his 
way straight into our hearts. 

Trimmer's pride reached high-water mark 
when it came to a younger brother who trav- 
elled in "notions" for a city firm. His pro- 
prietor was the personage the rich Jew always 
is in the city of London, and was made Al- 
derman and Lord Mayor, and knighted and 
baroneted, during the years Trimmer spent 
with us. She took enormous satisfaction in 
the splendour of this success, counting it an- 
other piece of her good luck to be connected, 
however remotely, with anybody so distin- 
guished. She had almost an air of proprie- 
torship on the 9th of November, when from 
our windows she watched his Show passing 
along the Embankment; she could not have 
been happier if she herself had been seated 
in the gorgeous Cinderella coach, with the 
coachman in wig and cocked hat, and the 
powdered footmen perched up behind; and 

51 



Our House 

when J. went to the Lord Mayor's dinner that 
same evening at the Guildhall, it became for 
her quite a family affair. I often fancied that 
she thought it reflected glory on us all to have 
the sister of a man who travelled in "notions" 
for a knight and a Lord Mayor, living in our 
chambers; though she would never have 
taken the liberty of showing it. 
; Trimmer's joy was only less in our friends 
than in her family, which was for long a puzzle 
to me. They added considerably to her al- 
ready heavy task, and in her place, I should 
have hated them for it. It might amuse us to 
have them drop in to lunch or to dinner at any 
time, and to gather them together once a 
week, on Thursday evening. But it could 
hardly amuse Trimmer, to whose share fell 
the problem of how to make a meal prepared 
for two go round among four or six, or how to 
get to the front door and dispose of hats and 
wraps in chambers so small that the weekly 
gathering filled even our little hall to over- 
flowing. There was always some one to help 
her on Thursdays, and she had not much to 
do in the way of catering. "Plain living and 



Trimmer 

high talking" was the principle upon which our 
evenings were run, and whoever wanted more 
than a sandwich or so could go elsewhere. 
But whatever had to be done, Trimmer In- 
sisted on doing, and, moreover, on doing It 
until the last pipe was out and the last word 
spoken; and as everybody almost was an artist 
or a writer, and as there is no subject so In- 
exhaustible as "shop," I do not like to re- 
member how late that often was. It made 
no difference. She refused to go to bed, and 
In her white cap and apron, with her air of 
old retainer or family nurse, she would waddle 
about through clouds of tobacco-smoke, offer- 
ing a box of cigarettes here, a plate of sand- 
wiches there, radiant, benevolent, more often 
than not in the way, toward the end looking 
as If she would drop, but apparently enjoying 
herself more than anybody, until It seemed 
as if the unkindness would be not to let her 
stay up In it. 

More puzzling to me than her Interest in all 
our friends was her choice of a few for her 
special favour. I could not see the reason for 
her choice, unless I had suspected her of a 

53 



Our House 

sudden passion for literature and art. Cer- 
tainly her chief attentions were lavished on 
the most distinguished among our friends, 
who were the very people most apt to put her 
devotion to the test. She adored Whistler, 
though when he was in London he had a way 
not only of dropping in to dinner, but sometimes 
of dropping in so late that it had to be cooked 
all over again. She was so far from minding 
that, at the familiar sound of his knock and 
ring, her face was wreathed in smiles, she 
seemed to look upon the extra work as a priv- 
ilege, and I have known her, without a word, 
trot off to the butcher's or the green-grocer's, 
or even to the tobacconist's in the Strand for 
the little Algerian cigarettes he loved. She 
went so far as to abandon certain of her pre- 
judices for his benefit, and I realized what a 
conquest he had made when she resigned her- 
self to cooking a fowl in a casserole and serv- 
ing it without bread-sauce. She discovered the 
daintiness of his appetite, and it was delight- 
ful to see her hovering over him at table and 
pointing out the choice bits in every dish she 
passed. She was forever finding an excuse to 

54 



Trimmer 

come into any room where he might be. 
Altogether, it was as complete a case of fasci- 
nation as if she had known him to be the great 
master he was; and she was his slave long 
before he gave her the ten shillings, which 
was valued sentimentally as I really believe 
a tip never was before or since by a British 
servant. 

Henley was hardly second in her esteem, 
and this was the more inexplicable because 
he provided her with so many more chances 
to prove it. Whistler then lived in Paris, and 
appeared only now and then. Henley lived in 
London half the week, and rarely missed a 
Thursday. For it was on that evening that 
the "National Observer," which he was edit- 
ing, went to press, and the printers in Covent 
Garden were conveniently near to our cham- 
bers. His work done, the paper put to bed, 
about ten or eleven he and the train of young 
men then in attendance upon him would come 
round; and to them, in the comfortable con- 
sciousness that the rest of the week was their 
own, time was of no consideration. Henley 
exulted in talk: if he had the right audience 

55 



Our House 

he would talk all night; and the right audience 
was willing to listen so long as he talked in 
our chambers. But Trimmer, in the kitchen, 
or handing round sandwiches, could not listen, 
and yet she lingered as long as anybody. It 
might be almost dawn before he got up to go, 
but she was there to fetch him his crutch and 
his big black hat, and to shut the door after 
him. Whatever the indiscretion of the hour 
one Thursday, she welcomed him as cordially 
the next, or any day in between when inclina- 
tion led him to toil up the three long flights of 
stairs to our dinner-table. 

Phil May was no less in her good graces, 
and his hours, if anything, were worse than 
Henley's, since the length of his stay did not 
depend on his talk. I never knew a man of 
less conversation. ''Have a drink," was its 
extent with many who thought themselves in 
his intimacy. This was a remark which he 
could scarcely offer to Trimmer at the front 
door, where Whistler and Henley never failed 
to exchange with her a friendly greeting. But 
all the same, she seemed to feel the charm 
which his admirers liked to attribute to him, 

56 



Trimmer 

and to find his smile, when he balanced him- 
self on the back of a chair, more than a sub- 
stitute for conversation, however animated. 
The flaw in my enjoyment of his company 
on our Thursdays was the certainty of the 
length of time he would be pleased to bestow 
it upon us. Trimmer must have shared this 
certainty, but to her it never mattered. She 
never failed to return his smile, though when 
he got down to go, she might be nodding, and 
barely able to drag one tired old foot after 
the other. 

She made as much of "Bob" Stevenson, 
whose hours were worse than anybody's. 
We would perhaps run across him at a press 
view of pictures in the morning and bring him 
back to lunch, he protesting that he must 
leave immediately after to get home to Kew 
and write his article before six o'clock. And 
then he would begin to talk, weaving a ro- 
mance of any subject that came up, — the 
subject was nothing, it was always what he 
made of it, — and he would go on talking 
until Trimmer, overjoyed at the chance, came 
in with afternoon tea; and he would go on 

57 



Our House 

talking until she announced dinner; and he 
would go on talking until all hours the next 
morning, long after his last train and any 
possibility of his article getting into yesterday 
afternoon's "Pall Mall." But early as he 
might appear, late as he might stay, he was 
never too early or too late for Trimmer. 

These were her favourites, though she was 
ready to " mother "Beardsley, who, she seemed 
to think, had just escaped from the school- 
room and ought to be sent back to it; though 
she had a protecting eye also for George 
Steevens, just up from Oxford, evidently mis- 
taking the silence which was then his habit for 
shyness; though, indeed, she overflowed with 
kindness for everbody who came. It was 
astonishing how, at her age, she managed to 
adapt herself to people and ways so unlike 
any she could ever have known, without re- 
laxing in the least from her own code of con- 
duct. 

Only twice can I remember seeing her really 
ruffled. Once was when Felix Buhot, who, 
during a long winter he spent in London, was 
often with us on Thursdays, went into the 

58 



Trimmer 

kitchen to teach her to make coffee. The in- 
ference that she could not make it hurt her 
feelings; but her real distress was to have him 
in the kitchen, which "ladies and gentlemen" 
should not enter. Between her desire to get 
him back to the dining-room and her fear lest 
he should discover it, she was terribly embar- 
rassed. It was funny to watch them: Buhot, 
unconscious of wrong and of English, intent 
upon measuring the coffee and pouring out 
the boiling water; Trimmer fluttering about 
him with flushed and anxious face, talking 
very loud and with great deliberation, in the 
not uncommon conviction that the foreigner's 
ignorance of English is only a form of deafness. 
On the other occasion she lost her temper, 
the only time in my experience. It was a Sun- 
day afternoon, and Whistler, appearing while 
she was out and staying on to supper, got 
Constant, his man, to add an onion soup and 
an omelet to the cold meats she had prepared, 
for he would never reconcile himself to the 
English supper. She was furious when she got 
back and found that her pots and pans had 
been meddled with, and her larder raided. 

59 



Our House 

She looked upon it as a reproach; as if she 
could n't serve Mr. Whistler as well as any 
foreign servant, — she had no use for foreign 
servants anyhow, — she would not have them 
making their foreign messes in any kitchen of 
hers! It took days and careful diplomacy to 
convince her that she had not been insulted. 

I was the more impressed by this outbreak 
of temper because, as a rule, she gave no sign 
of seeing, or hearing, or understanding any- 
thing that went on in our chambers. She 
treated me as I believe royalty should be 
treated, leaving it to me to open the talk, 
or to originate a topic. I remember once, 
when we were involved in a rumpus which 
had been discussed over our dinner-table for 
months beforehand, and which at the time 
filled the newspapers and was such public 
property that everybody in the Quarter — 
the milkman, the florist at the Temple of 
Pomona in the Strand, the Housekeeper 
downstairs, the postman — congratulated us 
on our victory. Trimmer alone held her peace. 
I could not believe that she really did not 
know, and at last I asked her: — 

60 



Trimmer 

"I suppose you have heard, Trimmer, what 
has been going on these days?" 

"What, mum?" was her answer. 

Then, exasperated, I explained. 

"Why yes, mum," she said. "I beg your 
pardon, mum, I really could n't 'elp it. I 'ave 
been reading the pipers, and the 'ousekeeper 
she was a-talking to me about it before you 
come in, and the postman too, and I was sayin' 
as 'ow glad I was. I 'ope you and the Master 
won't think it a liberty, mum. Thank you, 
mum!" 

I remember another time, when some of 
our friends took to running away with other 
friends' wives, and things became so compli- 
cated for everybody that our Thursday even- 
ings were brought to a sudden end. Trimmer 
kept the same stolid countenance through- 
out, until, partly to prevent awkwardness, 
partly out of curiosity, I asked her if she had 
seen the papers. 

"Oh, I beg your pardon, mum," she hesi- 
tated, "thank you, mum, I'm sure. I know 
it's a liberty, but you know, mum, they've all 
been 'ere so often I could n't help noticing 

6i 



Our House 

there was somethink. And I'm very sorry, 
mum, if you '11 excuse the liberty, they all was 
such lidies and gentlemen, mum." 

And so, I should never have known there 
was another reason, besides the natural kind- 
ness of her heart, for her interest in our friends 
and her acceptance of their ways, if, before 
this, I had not happened to say to her one 
Friday morning, — 

"You seem. Trimmer, to have a very great 
admiration for Mr. Phil May." 

"I 'ope you and Master won't think it a 
liberty, mum," she answered, in an agony of 
embarrassment, "but I do like to see 'im, and 
they alius so like to 'ear about 'im at 'ome. 
They're alius asking me when I 'ave last seen 
'im or Mr. Whistler." 

Then it came out. Chance had bestowed 
upon her father and one of the great American 
magazines the same name, with the result 
that the magazine was looked upon by her 
brothers and herself as belonging somehow to 
the family. The well-to-do brother sub- 
scribed to it, the other came to his house to see 
each new number. Through the illustrations 

62 



Trimmer 

and articles they had become as familiar with 
artists and authors as most people in England 
are with the ''winners," and their education 
had reached at least the point of discovery that 
news does not begin and end in sport. Judg- 
ing from Trimmer, I doubt if at first their 
patronage of art and literature went much 
further, but this was far enough for them to 
know, and to feel flattered by the knowledge, 
that she was living among people who figured 
in the columns of art and literary gossip as 
prominently as "all the winners" in the 
columns of the Sporting Prophets, though they 
would have been still more flattered had her lot 
been cast among the Prophets. In a few cases, 
their interest soon became more personal. 

It was their habit — why, I do not suppose 
they could have said themselves — to read 
any letter Whistler might write to the papers 
at a moment when he was given to writing, 
though what they made of the letter when read 
was more than Trimmer was able to explain; 
they also looked out for Phil May's drawings in 
"Punch"; they passed our articles round the 
family circle, — a compliment hardly more as- 

63 



Our House 

tonishing to Trimmer than to us. As time went 
on they began to follow the career of several of 
our other friends to whom Trimmer introduced 
them; and it was a gratification to them all, 
as well as a triumph for her, when on Sun- 
day afternoon she could say, "Mr. Crockett 
or Mr. 'Arold Frederic was at Master's last 
Thursday." Thus, through us, she became for 
the first time a person of importance in her 
brother's house, and I suspect also quite an 
authority in Brixton on all questions of art 
and literature. Indeed, she may, for all I 
know, have started another Carnegie Library 
in South London. 

It is a comfort now to think that her stay 
with us was pleasant to her; wages alone could 
not have paid our debt for the trouble she 
spared us during her five years in our cham- 
bers. I have an idea that, in every way, it was 
the most prosperous period of her life. When 
she came, she was not only without a penny in 
her pocket, but she owed pounds for her outfit 
of aprons and caps and dresses. Before she 
left, she was saving money. She opened a book 
at the Post Office Savings Bank; she subscribed 

64 



Trimmer 

to one of those societies which would assure her 
a respectable funeral, for she had the ambition 
of all the self-respecting poor to be put away 
decent, after having, by honest work, kept 
oS the parish to the end. Her future provided 
for, she could make the most of whatever 
pleasures the present might throw in her way, 
— the pantomime at Christmas, a good seat 
for the Queen's Jubilee procession; above all, 
the two weeks' summer holiday. No journey 
was ever so full of adventure as hers to Mar- 
gate, or Yarmouth, or Hastings, from the first 
preparation to the moment of return, when 
she would appear laden with presents of Yar- 
mouth bloaters or Margate shrimps, to be 
divided between the old charwoman and our- 
selves. 

If she had no desire to leave us, we had 
none to have her go; and as the years passed, 
we did not see why she should. She was old, 
but she bore her age with vigour. She was 
hardly ever ill, and never with anything 
worse than a cold or an indigestion, though 
she had an inconvenient talent for accidents. 
The way she managed to cut her fingers was 

65 



Our House 

little short of genius. One or two were always 
wrapped in rags. But no matter how deep the 
gash, she was as cheerful as if it were an accom- 
plishment. With the blood pouring from the 
wound, she would beam upon me: "You 'ave 
no idea, mum, what wonderful flesh I 'as fur 
'ealin'." Her success in falling down our little 
narrow stairway was scarcely less remarkable. 
But the worst tumble of all was the one which 
J. had so long expected. He had just moved 
his portfolios to an unaccustomed place one 
morning, when a letter, or a message, or some- 
thing, sent her stumbling into the studio with 
her usual impetuosity, and over she tripped. 
It was so bad that we had to have the doctor, 
her arm was so seriously strained that he made 
her carry it in a sling for weeks. We were 
alarmed, but not Trimmer. 

"You know, mum, it is lucky; it might 'ave 
been the right harm, and that would 'ave been 
bad!" 

She really thought it another piece of her 
extraordinary good luck. 

Poor Trimmer! It needed so little to make 
her happy, and within five years of her coming 

66 



Trimmer 

to us that little was taken from her. All she 
asked of life was work, and a worse infirmity 
than age put a stop to her working for us, or 
for anybody else, ever again. At the beginning 
of her trouble, she would not admit to us, nor 
I fancy to herself, that anything was wrong, 
and she was "bonny," though she went "cut- 
ting about" at a snail's pace and her cheerful 
old face grew haggard. Presently, there were 
days when she could not keep up the pretence, 
and then she said her head ached and she 
begged my pardon for the liberty. I consulted 
a doctor. He thought it might be neuralgia 
and dosed her for it; she thought it her teeth, 
and had almost all the few still left to her 
pulled out. And the pain was worse than ever. 
Then, as we were on the point of leaving town 
for some weeks, we handed over our chambers 
to the frowzy old charwoman, and sent Trim- 
mer down to the sea at Hastings. She was 
waiting to receive us when we returned, but 
she gave us only the ghost of her old smile in 
greeting, and her face was more haggard and 
drawn than ever. For a day she tottered about 
from one room to another^ cooking, dusting, 

67 



Our House 

making beds, and looking all the while as if 
she were on the rack. She was a melancholy- 
wreck of the old cheerful, bustling, exasper- 
ating Trimmer; and it was more than we could 
stand. I told her so. She forgot to beg my 
pardon for the liberty in her hurry to assure 
me that nothing was wrong, that she could 
work, that she wanted to work, that she was 
not happy when she did not work. 

"Oh, I'm bonny, mum, I'm bonny!" she 
kept saying over and over again. 

Her despair at the thought of stopping 
work was more cruel to see than her physical 
torture, and I knew, without her telling me, 
that her fear of the pain she might have still to 
suffer was nothing compared to her fear of 
the workhouse she had toiled all her life to 
keep out of. She had just seven pounds and 
fifteen shillings for her fortune; her family, be- 
ing working people, would have no use for her 
once she was of no use to them; our chambers 
were her home only so long as she could do 
in them what she had agreed to do; there was 
no Workmen's Compensation Act in those 
days, no old-age pensions, even if she had been 

68 



Trimmer 

old enough to get one. What was left for a 
poor woman, full of years and pain, save the 
one refuge which, all her life, she had been 
taught to look upon as scarcely less shameful 
than the prison or the scaffold? 

Well, Trimmer had done her best for us ; now 
we did our best for her, and, as it turned out, 
the best that could be done. Through a friend, 
we got her into St. Bartholomew's Hospital. 
Her case was hopeless from the first. A malig- 
nant growth so close to the brain that at her 
age an operation was too serious a risk, and 
without it she might linger in agony for 
months, — this was what life had been hold- 
ing in store for Trimmer during those long 
years of incessant toil, and self-sacrifice, and 
obstinate belief that a drunken husband, a 
selfish brother, an empty purse, were all for 
the best in our best of all possible worlds. 

She did not know how ill she was, and her 
first weeks at the hospital were happy. The 
violence of the pain was relieved, the poor 
tired old body was the better for the rest and 
the cool and the quiet; she who had spent her 
strength waiting on others enjoyed the novel 

69 



Our House 

experience of being waited on herself. There 
were the visits of her family on visiting days, 
and mine in between, to look forward to; some 
of our friends, who had grown as fond of her 
as we, sent her fruit and flowers, and she liked 
the consequence all this gave her in the ward. 
Then, the hospital gossip was a distraction, per- 
haps because in talking about the sufferings of 
others she could forget her own. My objection 
was that she would spare me not a single de- 
tail. But in some curious way I could not 
fathom, it seemed a help to Trimmer, and I 
had not the heart to cut her stories short. 

After a month or so, the reaction came. Her 
head was no better, and what was the hospital 
good for if they could n't cure her? She grew 
suspicious, hinting dark things to me about the 
doctors. They were keeping her there to try 
experiments on her, and she was a respectable 
woman, and always had been, and she did not 
like to be stared at in her bed by a lot of young 
fellows. The nurses were as bad. But once 
out of their clutches she would be "bonny" 
again, she knew. Probably the doctors and 
nurses knew too, for the same suspicion is 

70 



Trimmer 

more often than not their reward; and indeed 
it was so unlike Trimmer that she must have 
picked it up in the ward. Anyway, in their 
kindness they had ,kept her far longer than 
is usual in such cases, and when they saw her 
grow restless and unhappy, it seemed best to let 
her go. At the end of four months, and to her 
infinite joy, Trimmer, five years older than when 
she came to us, in the advanced stage of an in- 
curable disease, with a capital of seven pounds 
and fifteen shillings, was free to begin life again. 
I pass quickly over the next weeks, — I wish 
I could have passed over them as quickly at the 
time. My visits were now to a drab quarter on 
the outskirts of Camden Town, where Trimmer 
had set up as a capitalist. She boarded with 
her cousin, many shillings of her little store 
going to pay the weekly bill; she found a won- 
derful doctor who promised to cure her in 
no time, and into his pockets the rest of her 
savings flowed. There was no persuading her 
that he could not succeed where the doctors at 
the hospital had failed, and so long as she went 
to him, to help her would only have meant 
more shillings for an unscrupulous quack who 

71 



Our House 

traded on the ignorance and credulity of the 
poor. Week by week I saw her grow feebler, 
week by week I knew her little capital was 
dribbling fast away. She seemed haunted by 
the dread that her place would be taken in 
our chambers, and that, once cured, she would 
have to hunt for another. That she was 
*' bonny" was the beginning and end of all 
she had to say. One morning, to prove it, she 
managed to drag herself down to see us, 
arriving with just strength enough to stagger 
into my room, her arms outstretched to feel 
her way, for the disease, by this time, was af- 
fecting both eyes and brain. Nothing would 
satisfy her until she had gone into the studio, 
stumbling about among the portfolios, I on 
one side, on the other J., with no desire to 
wring her neck for it was grim tragedy we 
were guiding between us, — tragedy in rusty 
black with a reticule hanging from one arm, — 
five years nearer the end than when first the 
curtain rose upon it in our chambers. We 
bundled her off as fast as we could, in a cab, 
with the cousin who had brought her. She 
stopped in the doorway. 

72 



Trimmer 

"Oh, I'm bonny, mum. I can cut about, 
you'll see!" And she would have fallen, had 
not the cousin caught and steadied her. 

After that, she had not the strength to drag 
herself anywhere, not even to see the quack. 
A week later she took to her bed, almost blind, 
her poor old wits scattered beyond recovery. 
I was glad of that: It spared her the weary 
waiting and watching for death while the 
shadow of the grim building she feared still 
more drew ever nearer. I hesitated to go and 
see her, for my mere presence stirred her into 
consciousness, and reminded her of her need 
to work and her danger if she could not. 
Then there was a day when she did not seem 
to know I was there, and she paid no attention 
to me, never spoke until just as I was going, 
when of a sudden she sat bolt upright: — 

" Oh, I 'm bonny, mum, I 'm bonny. You '11 
see! " she walled, and sank back on her pil- 
lows. 

These were Trimmer's last words to me, 
and I left her at death's door, still crying for 
work, as if In the next world, as in this, it was 
her only salvation. Very soon, the cousin 

73 



Our House 

came to tell me that the little capital had 
dribbled entirely away, and that she could not 
keep Trimmer without being paid for it. 
Could I blame her? She had her own fight 
against the shadow hanging all too close now 
over Trimmer. Her 'usband worked 'ard, she 
said, and they could just live respectable, and 
Trimmer's brothers, they was for sending 
Trimmer to the workus. They might have 
sent her, and I doubt if she would have been 
the wiser. But could we see her go? For our 
own comfort, for our own peace of mind, we 
interfered and arranged that Trimmer should 
board with her cousin until a bed was found 
in another hospital. It was found, mercifully, 
almost at once, but, before I had time to go 
there, the Great Release had come for her; and 
we heard with thankfulness that the old head 
was free from suffering, that the twisted hands 
were still, that fear of the workhouse could 
trouble her no more. Life's one gift to Trim- 
mer had been toil, pain her one reward, and it 
was good to know that she was at rest. 

The cousin brought us the news. But I had 
a visit the same day from the sister-in-law, the 

74 



Trimmer 

paragon of virtue, a thin, sharp-faced woman 
of middle age. I said what I could in sym- 
pathy, telling her how much we missed Trim- 
mer, how well we should always remember 
her. But this was not what she had come to 
hear. She let me get through. She drew the 
sigh appropriate for the occasion. Then she 
settled down to business. When did I pro- 
pose to pay back the money Trimmer had 
spent on the doctor In Camden Town.^ I 
did n't propose to at all, I told her: he was a 
miserable quack and I had done my best to 
keep Trimmer from going to him; besides, 
fortunately for her, she was beyond the reach 
of money that was not owing to her. The sis- 
ter-in-law was indignant. The family always 
understood I had promised, a promise was a 
promise, and now they depended on me for 
the funeral. I reminded her of the society to 
which Trimmer had subscribed solely to meet 
that expense. But she quickly let me know 
that the funeral the society proposed to pro- 
vide fell far short of the family's standard. 
To them it appeared scarcely better than a 
pauper's. The coffin would be plain, there 

75 



Our House 

would be no oak and brass handles, — worse, 
there would be no plumes for the horses and the 
hearse. To send their sister to her grave with- 
out plumes would disgrace them before their 
neighbours. Nor would there be a penny over 
for the family mourning, — could I allow them, 
the chief mourners, to mourn without crape? 
I remembered their willingness to let Trim- 
mer die as a pauper in the workhouse. After 
all, she would have the funeral she had pro- 
vided for. She would lie no easier in her grave 
for oak and brass handles, for plumes and 
crape. Her family had made use of her all her 
life; I did not see why I should help them to 
make use of her after her death, that their 
grief might be trumpeted in Brixton and 
Camden Town. I brought the interview to 
an end. But sometimes I wonder if Trimmer 
would not have liked it better if I had helped 
them, if plumes had waved from the heads of 
the horses that drew her to her grave, if her 
family had followed swathed in crape. She 
would have looked upon it as another piece 
of her extraordinary good luck if, by dying, 
she had been of service to anybody. 

76 



Trimmer 

I do not know where they buried her. 
Probably nobody save ourselves to-day has as 
much as a thought for her. But, If self-sacri- 
fice counts for anything, If martyrdom Is a 
passport to heaven, then Trimmer should 
take her place up there by the side of St. 
Francis of Asslsl, and Joan of Arc, and St. 
Vincent de Paul, and all those other blessed 
men and women whose lives were given for 
others, and who thought It was "bonny." 



Ill 

Louise 



Ill 



LOUISE 



For the third time since we had taken our 
chambers, I was servantless, and I could not 
summon up courage to face for the third time 
the scorn which the simple request for a 
"general" meets in the English Registry 
Office. That was what sent me to try my luck 
at a French Bureau in Soho, where, I was given 
to understand, it was possible to inquire for, 
and actually obtain, a good bonne a tout {aire 
and escape without insult. 

Louise was announced one dull November 
morning, a few days later. I found her waiting 
for me in our little hall, — a woman of about 
forty, short, plump, with black eyes, blacker 
hair, and an enchanting smile. But the 
powder on her face and the sham diamonds in 
her ears seemed to hang out danger signals, 
and my first impulse was to show her the door. 
It was something familiar in the face under 

8i 



Our House 

the powder, above all In the voice when she 
spoke, that made me hesitate. 

"Provengale?" I asked. 

"Yes, from Marseilles," she answered, and 
I showed her Instead Into my room. 

I had often been *Mown there" where the 
sun shines and skies are blue, and her Pro- 
vencal accent came like a breath from the 
south through the gloom of the London fog, 
bringing It all back to me, — the blinding 
white roads, the gray hills sweet with thyme 
and lavender, the towns with their "antiqui- 
ties," the little shining white villages, — M. 
Bernard's at Martlgues, and his dining-room, 
and the Marselllals who crowded It on a Sun- 
day morning, and the gaiety and the laughter, 
and Desire in his white apron, and the great 
bowls of bouillabaisse . . . 

It was she who recalled me to the business 
of the moment. Her name was Louise Sorel, 
she said; she could clean, wash, play the lady's 
maid, sew, market, cook — but cook! Te — 
au mouins, she would show Madame ; and, as she 
said it, she smiled. I have never seen such 
perfect teeth in woman or child; you knew 

^2 



Louise 

at a glance that she must have been a radiant 
beauty In her youth. A Provencal accent, an 
enchanting smile, and the remains of beauty, 
however, are not precisely what you engage 
a servant for; and, with a sudden access of 
common sense, I asked for references. Surely, 
Madame would not ask the Impossible, she 
said reproachfully. She had but arrived in 
London, she had never gone as Jonfz^ anywhere; 
how, then, could she give references .f* She 
needed the work and was willing to do it: 
was not that sufficient t I got out of It meanly 
by telling her I would think it over. At that 
she smiled again, — really, her smile on a 
November day almost warranted the risk. 
I meant to take her; she knew; Madame was 
kind. 

I did think it over, — while I interviewed 
slovenly English *' generals" and stray Italian 
children, dropped upon me from Heaven knows 
where, while I darned the family stockings, 
while I ate the charwoman's chops. I thought 
it over indeed, far more than I wanted to, 
until, in despair, I returned to the Soho 
Bureau to complain that I was still without 

83 



Our House 

a servant of any kind. The first person I saw 
was Louise, disconsolate, on a chair in the 
corner. She sprang up when she recognized 
me. Had she not said Madame was kind? 
she cried. Madame had come for her. I had 
done nothing of the sort. But there she was, 
this charming creature from the South; at 
home was the charwoman, dingy and dreary 
as the November skies. To look back now is 
to wonder why I did not jump at the chance 
of having her. As it was, I did take her, — 
no references, powder, sham diamonds, and 
all. But I compromised. It was to be for a 
week. After that, we should see. An hour 
later she was in my kitchen. 

A wonderful week followed. From the start 
we could not resist her charm, though to be 
on such terms with one's servant as to know 
that she has charm, is no doubt the worst 
possible kind of bad form. Even William 
Penn, the fastidious, was her slave at first 
sight, — and it would have been rank ingrati- 
tude if he had not been, for, from the ordinary 
London tabby average people saw in him, he 
was at once transformed into the most superb, 

84 



Louise 

the most magnificent of cats! And we were 
all superb, we were all magnificent, down to 
the snuffy, tattered old Irish chanvoman who 
came to make us untidy three times a week, 
and whom we had not the heart to turn out, 
because we knew that if we did, there could 
be no one else foolish enough to take her in 
again. 

And Louise, though her southern imagina- 
tion did such great things for us, had not over- 
rated herself. She might be always laughing 
at everything, as they always do laugh "down 
there," — at the English she could n't under- 
stand, at Mize Bourn, the nearest she came 
to the charwoman's name, at the fog she must 
have hated, at the dirt left for her to clean. 
But she worked harder than any servant I 
have ever had, and to better purpose. She 
adored the cleanliness and the order, it seemed, 
and was appalled at the dirt and slovenliness 
of the English, as every Frenchwoman is when 
she comes to the land that has not ceased to 
brag of its cleanliness since its own astonished 
discovery of the morning tub. Before Louise, 
the London blacks disappeared as if by magic. 

85 



Our House 

Our wardrobes were overhauled and set to 
rights. The linen was mended and put in 
place. And she could cook! Such risotto! — 
she had been in Italy — Such macaroni! Such 
bouillabaisse! Throughout that wonderful 
week, our chambers smelt as strong of ail as 
a Provencal kitchen. 

In the face of all this, I do not see how I 
brought myself to find any fault. To do myself 
justice, I never did when it was a question of 
the usual domestic conventions. Louise was 
better than all the conventions — all the prim 
English maids in prim white caps — in the 
world. Just to hear her talk, just to have her 
call that disreputable old Mize Bourn ma 
belle, just to have her announce as La Dame de 
la bouillabaisse a friend of ours who had been 
to Provence and had come to feast on her 
masterpiece and praised her for it, — just 
each and every one of her charming southern 
ways made up for the worst domestic crime 
she could have committed, I admit to a spasm 
of dismay when, for the first meal she served, 
she appeared in her petticoat, a dish-cloth for 
apron, and her sleeves rolled up above her 

86 



Louise 

elbows. But I forgot it with her delightful 
laugh at herself when I explained that, ab- 
surdly it might be, we preferred a skirt, an 
apron, and sleeves fastened at the wrists. It 
seemed she adored the economy too, and she 
had wished to protect her dress and even her 
apron. 

These things would horrify the model house- 
wife; but then, I am not a model housewife, 
and they amused me, especially as she was 
so quick to meet me, not only half, but the 
whole way. When, however, she took to run- 
ning out at intervals on mysterious errands, 
I felt that I must object. Her first excuse was 
les affaires; her next, a friend; and, when 
neither of these would serve, she owned up to 
a husband who, apparently, spent his time 
waiting for her at the street corner; he was so 
lonely, le pauvre! I suggested that he should 
come and see her in the kitchen. She laughed 
outright. Why, he was of a shyness Madame 
could not figure to herself. He never would 
dare to mount the stairs and ring the front 
doorbell. 

In the course of this wonderful week, there 
87. 



Our House 

was sent to me, from the Soho Bureau^ a Swiss 
girl with as many references as a Colonial 
Dame has grandfathers. Even so, and despite 
the inconvenient husband, I might not have 
dismissed Louise, — it was so pleasant to live 
in an atmosphere of superlatives and aiL It 
was she who settled the matter with some 
vague story of a partnership in a restaurant 
and work waiting for her there. Perhaps we 
should have parted with an affectation of in- 
difference had not J. unexpectedly interfered. 
Husbands have a trick of pretending supe- 
riority to details of housekeeping until you 
have had all the bother, and then upsetting 
everything by their interference. She had 
given us the sort of time we had n't had since 
the old days in Provence, he argued; her smile 
alone was worth double the money agreed 
upon; therefore, double the money was the 
least I could in decency offer her. His logic 
was irreproachable, but housekeeping on such 
principles would end in domestic bankruptcy. 
However, Louise got the money, and my re- 
ward was her face when she thanked me — 
she made giving sheer self-indulgence — and 

88 



Louise 

the risotto which, in the shock of gratitude, 
she insisted upon coming the next day to cook 
for us. 

But, in the end, J.'s indiscretion cost me 
dear. As Louise was determined to magnify 
all our geese, not merely into swans, but into 
the most superb, the most magnificent swans, 
the few extra shillings had multiplied so 
miraculously by the time their fame reached 
the Quartter, that Madame of the Bureau saw 
in me a special Providence appointed to re- 
lieve her financial difiiculties, and hurried to 
claim an immediate loan. Then, her claim 
being disregarded, she wrote to call my atten- 
tion to the passing of the days and the miser- 
able pettiness of the sum demanded, and to 
assure me of her consideration the most per- 
fect. She got to be an intolerable nuisance 
before I heard the last of her. 

We had not realized the delight of having 
Louise to take care of us, u.ntil she was re- 
placed by the Swiss girl, who was industrious, 
sober, well-trained, with all the stolidity and 
surliness of her people, and as colourless as a 
self-respecting servant ought to be. I was 

89 



Our House 

immensely relieved when, after a fortnight, 
she found the work too much for her. It was 
just as she was on the point of going that 
Louise reappeared, her face still white with 
powder, the sham diamonds still glittering in 
her ears, but somehow changed, I could not 
quite make out how. She had come, she ex- 
plained to present me with a ring of pearls and 
opals and of surpassing beauty, at the moment 
pawned for a mere trifle, — here was the 
ticket; I had but to pay, add a smaller trifle 
for interest and commission, and it was mine. 
As I never have worn rings I did not care to 
begin the habit by gambling in pawn tickets, 
much though I should have liked to oblige 
Louise. Her emotion when I refused seemed 
so out of proportion, and yet was so unmis- 
takably genuine, that it bewildered me. 

But she pulled herself together almost at 
once and began to talk of the restaurant which, 
I learned, was marching in a simply marvellous 
manner. It was only when, in answer to her 
question, I told her that the Demoiselle Suisse 
was marching not at all and was about to leave 
me, that the truth came out. There was no 

90 



Louise 

restaurant, there never had been, — except in 
the country of Tartarln's lions ; It was her In- 
vention to spare me any self-reproach I might 
have felt for turning her adrift at the end 
of her week's engagement. She had found no 
work since. She and her husband had pawned 
everything. Tiens, and she emptied before 
me a pocketful of pawn tickets. They were 
without a sou. They had had nothing to eat 
for twenty-four hours. That was the change. 
I began to understand. She was starving, lit- 
erally starving, in the cold and gloom and 
damp of the London winter, she who was used 
to the warmth and sunshine, to the clear blue 
skies of Provence. If the aliens who drift to 
England, as to the Promised Land, could but 
know what awaited them ! 

Of course I took her back. She might have 
added rouge to the powder, she might have 
glittered all over with diamonds, sham or real, 
and I would not have minded. J. welcomed 
her with joy. William Penn hung rapturously 
at her heels. We had a risotto, golden as the 
sun of the Midi, fragrant as its kitchens, for 
our dinner. 

91 



Our House 

There was no question of a week now, no 
question of time at all. It did not seem as if 
we ever could manage again, as if we ever 
could have managed, without Louise. And 
she, on her side, took possession of our cham- 
bers, and, for a ridiculously small sum a week, 
worked her miracles for us. We positively 
shone with cleanliness; London grime no 
longer lurked, the skeleton in our cupboards. 
We never ate dinners and breakfasts more 
to our liking, never had I been so free from 
housekeeping, never had my weekly bills 
been so small. Eventually, she charged her- 
self with the marketing, though she could not, 
and never could, learn to speak a word of 
English; but not even the London tradesman 
was proof against her smile. She kept the 
weekly accounts, though she could neither 
read nor write : in her intelligence, an eloquent 
witness to the folly of general education. She 
was, in a word, the most capable and intelli- 
gent woman I have ever met, so that it was the 
more astounding that she should also be the 
most charming. 

Most astounding of all was the way, en- 
92 



Louise 

tirely, typically Provengale as she was, she 
could adapt herself to London and its life and 
people. Though she wore in the street an 
ordinary felt hat, and in the house the English 
apron, you could see that her hair was made 
for the pretty Provencal ribbon, and her 
broad shoulders for the Provengal fichu. Te^ 
ve, and au mouins were as constantly in her 
mouth as in Tartarin's. Provencal proverbs 
forever hovered on her lips. She sang Pro- 
vengal songs at her work. She had ready a 
Provencal story for every occasion. Her very 
adjectives were Mistral's, her very exaggera- 
tions Daudet's. And yet she did everything 
as if she had been a "general" in London 
chambers all her life. Nothing came amiss to 
her. After her first startling appearance as 
waitress, it was no time before she was serving 
at table as if she had been born to it, and with 
such a grace of her own that every dish she 
offered seemed a personal tribute. People 
who had never seen her before would smile 
back involuntarily as they helped themselves. 
It was the same no matter what she did. She 
was always gay, however heavy her task. 

93 



Our House 

To her even London, with its fogs, was a 
galejado, as they say "down there." And she 
was so appreciative. We would make excuses 
to give her things for the pleasure of watching 
the warm glow spread over her face and the 
light leap to her eyes. We would send her to 
the theatre for the delight of having her come 
back and tell us about it. All the world, on and 
off the stage, was exalted and transfigured as 
she saw it. 

But frank as she was in her admiration of 
all the world, she remained curiously reticent 
about herself. "My poor grandmother used 
to say, you must turn your tongue seven times 
in your mouth before speaking," she said to 
me once; and I used to fancy she gave hers 
a few extra twists when it came to talking of 
her own affairs. Some few facts I gathered: 
that she had been at one time an ouvreuse in 
a Marseilles theatre; at another, a tailoress, — 
how accomplished, the smart appearance of 
her husband in J.'s old coats and trousers was 
to show us; and that, always, off and on, she 
had made a business of buying at the periodi- 
cal sales of the Mont de Piete and selling at 

94. 



Louise 

private sales of her own. I gathered also that 
they all knew her in Marseilles ; it was Louise 
here, Louise there, as she passed through the 
market, and everybody must have a word and 
a laugh with her. No wonder! You could n't 
have a word and a laugh once with Louise 
and not long to repeat the experience. But 
to her life when the hours of work were over, 
she offered next to no clue. 

Only one or two figures flitted, pale shadows, 
through her rare reminiscences. One was the 
old grandmother, whose sayings were full of 
wisdom, but who seemed to have done little 
for her save give her, fortunately, no schooling 
at all, and a religious education that bore the 
most surprising fruit. Louise had made her 
first communion, she had walked in procession 
on feast days. J^adorais qa^ she would tell me, 
as she recalled her long white veil and the 
taper in her hand. But she adored every bit 
as much going to the Salvation Army meetings, 
— the lassies would invite her in, and lend her 
a hymn-book, and she would sing as hard as 
ever she could, was her account. Her ideas on 
the subject of the Scriptures and the relations 

95 



Our House 

of the Holy Family left me gasping. But her 
creed had the merit of simplicity. The Boun 
Diou was intelligent, she maintained; il aime 
les gens honnetes. He would not ask her to 
hurry off to church and leave all in disorder 
at home, and waste her time. If she needed to 
pray, she knelt down where and as she was, 
and the Boun Diou was as well pleased. He was 
a man like us, was n't He ? Well then, He 
understood. 

There was also a sister. She occupied a 
modest apartment in Marseilles when she first 
dawned upon our horizon, but so rapidly did 
it expand into a palatial house in town and a 
palatial villa by the sea, both with cellars of 
rare and exquisite vintages and stables full 
of horses and carriages, that we looked con- 
fidently to the fast-approaching day when we 
should find her installed in the Elysee at 
Paris. Only in one respect did she never vary 
by a hair's breadth: this was her hatred of 
Louise's husband. 

Here, at all events, was a member of the 
family about whom we learned more than we 
cared to know. For if he did not show himself 

96 



Louise 

at first, that did not mean his willingness to 
let us ignore him. He persisted in wanting 
Louise to meet him at the corner, sometimes 
just when I most wanted her in the kitchen. 
He would have her come back to him at night; 
and to see her, after her day's hard work, start 
out in the black sodden streets, seldom earlier 
than ten, often as late as midnight; to realize 
that she must start back long before the sun 
would have thought of coming up, if the sun 
ever did come up on a London winter morn- 
ing, made us wretchedly uncomfortable. The 
husband, however, was not to be moved by any 
messages I might send him. He was too shy 
to grant the interview I asked. But he gave 
me to understand through her that he wouldn't 
do without her, he would rather starve, he 
could n't get along without her. We did not 
blame him : we could n't, either. That was 
why, after several weeks of discomfort to all 
concerned, it occurred to us that we might 
invite him to make our home his; and we were 
charmed by his condescension when, at last 
conquering his shyness, he accepted our invi- 
tation. The threatened deadlock was thus 

97 



Our House 

settled, and M. Auguste, as he introduced him- 
self, came to us as a guest for as long as he 
chose to stay. There were friends — there 
always are — to warn us that what we were 
doing was sheer madness. What did we know 
about him, anyway? Precious little, it was a 
fact: that he was the husband of Louise, 
neither more nor less. We did not even know 
that, it was hinted. But if Louise had not 
asked for our marriage certificate, could we 
insist upon her producing hers i 

It may have been mad, but it worked excel- 
lently. M. Auguste as a guest was the pattern 
of discretion. I had never had so much as a 
glimpse of him until he came to visit us. Then 
I found him a good-looking man, evidently 
a few years younger than Louise, well-built, 
rather taller than the average Frenchman. 
Beyond this, it was weeks before I knew any- 
thing of him except the astonishing adroitness 
with which he kept out of our way. He 
quickly learned our hours and arranged his 
accordingly. After we had begun work in 
the morning, he would saunter down to the 
kitchen and have his coffee, the one person of 

98 



Louise 

leisure in the establishment. After that, and 
again in the afternoon, he would stroll out to 
attend to what I take were the not too arduous 
duties of a horse-dealer with neither horses 
nor capital, — for as a horse-dealer he de- 
scribed himself when he had got so far as to 
describe himself at all. At noon and at dinner- 
time, he would return from Tattersall's, or 
wherever his not too exhausting business had 
called him, with a small paper parcel supposed 
to contain his breakfast or his dinner, our 
agreement being that he was to supply his own 
food. The evenings he spent with Louise. 
I could discover no vice in him except the, to 
us, disturbing excess of his devotion to her. 
You read of this sort of devotion in French 
novels and do not believe in it. But M. Au- 
guste, in his exacting dependence on Louise, 
left the French novel far behind. As for 
Louise, though she was no longer young and 
beauty fades early in the South, I have never 
met, in or out of books, a woman who made 
me understand so well the reason of the self- 
ishness some men call love. 
M. Auguste's manners to us were irreproach- 
99 



Our House 

able. We could only admire the consideration 
he showed in so persistently effacing himself. 
J. never would have seen him, if on feast days 
— Christmas, New Year's, the 14th of July — 
M. Auguste had not, with great ceremony, 
entered the dining-room at the hour of morn- 
ing coffee to shake hands and wish J. the com- 
pliments of the season. With me his relations 
grew less formal, for he was not slow to dis- 
cover that we had one pleasant weakness in 
common. Though the modest proportions of 
that brown-paper parcel might not suggest it, 
M. Auguste knew and liked what was good to 
eat; so did I. Almost before I realized it, he 
had fallen into the habit of preparing some 
special dish for me, or of making my coffee, 
when I chanced to be alone for lunch or for 
dinner. I can still see the gleam in his eyes as 
he brought me in my cup, and assured me that 
he, not Louise, was the artist, and that it was 
something of extra — but of extra ! — as it 
always was. Nor was it long before he was 
installed chef in our kitchen on the occasion 
of any little breakfast or dinner we might be 
giving. The first time I caught him in shirt- 

100 



Louise 

sleeves, with Louise's apron flapping about his 
legs and the bib drawn over his waistcoat, he 
was inclined to be apologetic. But he soon 
gave up apology. It was evident there were 
few things he enjoyed more than cooking a 
good dinner, — unless it was eating it, — and 
his apron was put on early in the day. In the 
end, I never asked any one to breakfast or 
dinner without consulting him, and his menus 
strengthened the friendliness of our rela- 
tions. 

After a while he ran my errands and helped 
Louise to market. I found that he spoke and 
wrote very good English, and was a man of 
some education. I have preserved his daily 
accounts, written in an unusually neat hand- 
writing, always beginning "Mussy: i penny"; 
and this reminds me that not least in his fa- 
vour was his success in ingratiating himself 
with William Penn, — or "Mussy" in Louise's 
one heroic attempt to cope with the English. 
M. Auguste, moreover, was quiet and reserved 
to a degree that would not have discredited 
the traditional Englishman. Only now and 
then did the Midi show itself in him: in the 

lOI 



Our House 

gleam of his eye over his gastronomic master- 
pieces; in his pose as horse-dealer and the 
scale on which the business he never did was 
schemed, — Mademoiselle y the French dress- 
maker from Versailles, who counted in tens 
and thought herself rich, was dazzled by the 
way M. Auguste reckoned by thousands; and 
once, luckily only once, in a frenzied outbreak 
of passion. 

He was called to Paris, I never understood 
why. When the day came, he was seized with 
such despair as I had never seen before, as I 
trust I may never have to see again. He could 
not leave Louise, he would not. No! No! 
No ! He raved, he swore, he wept. I was terri- 
fied, but Louise, when I called her aside to 
consult her, shrugged her shoulders. "We 
play the comedy in the kitchen," she laughed, 
but I noticed that her laughter was low. I 
fancy when you played the comedy with M. 
Auguste, tragedy was only just round the 
corner. With the help of Mademoiselle she got 
him to the station; he had wanted to throw 
himself from the train as it started, was her 
report. And in three days, not a penny the 

102 



Louise 

richer for the journey, he had returned to his 
life of ease in our chambers. 

Thus we came to know M. Auguste's vir- 
tues and something of his temper, but never 
M. Auguste himself. The months passed, and 
we were still conscious of mystery. I did not 
inspire him with the healthy fear he enter- 
tained for J., but I cannot say he ever took me 
into his confidence. What he was when not in 
our chambers; what he had been before he 
moved into them; what turn of fate had 
stranded him, penniless, in London with 
Louise, to make us the richer for his coming; 
why he, a man of education, was married to 
a woman of none; why he was M. Auguste 
while Louise was Louise Sorel — I knew as 
little the day he left us as the day he arrived. 
J. instinctively distrusted him, convinced that 
he had committed some monstrous crime and 
was in hiding. This was also the opinion of 
the French Quarter, as I learned afterwards. 
It seems the Quartier held its breath when it 
heard he was our guest, and waited for the 
worst, only uncertain what form that worst 
woul4 take, — whether we should be assassi- 

103 



Our House 

nated in our beds, or a bonfire made of our 
chambers. M. Auguste, however, spared us 
and disappointed the Quartier, His crime, to 
the end, remained as baffling as the identity 
of the Man In the Iron Mask, or the secret of 
Kaspar Hauser. 

That he was honest, I would wager my own 
reputation for honesty, even if it was curious 
the way his fingers gradually covered them- 
selves with rings, a watch-chain dangled from 
his waistcoat pocket, a pin was stuck jauntily 
in his necktie. Her last purchases at the 
Mont de Piete^ pawned during those first weeks 
of starving in London and gradually redeemed, 
was Louise's explanation; and why should we 
have suspected M. Auguste of coming by 
them unlawfully when he never attempted to 
rob us, though we gave him every opportunity? 
He knew where I kept my money and my 
keys. He was alone with Louise in our cham- 
bers, not only many a day and evening, but 
once for a long summer. 

We had to cycle down into Italy and William 
Penn could not be left to care for himself, nor 
could we board him out without risking the 

104 



Louise 

individuality of a cat who had never seen the 
world except from the top of a four-story 
house. Louise and M. Auguste, therefore, 
were retained to look after him, which, I 
should add, they did in a manner as satisfac- 
tory to William as to ourselves. Every week I 
received a report of his health and appetite 
from M. Auguste, in whom I discovered a new 
and delightful talent as correspondent. ^'De- 
puis votre depart^^ said the first, ''' ceite pauvre 
bete a miaule apres vous tous les jours, et il est 
constamment a la porte pour voir si vous ne venez 
pas, II ne commence vraiment a en prendre son 
parti que depuis hier, Mais tous ces soucis de 
chat [for that charming phrase what would one 
not have forgiven M. Auguste?], mais tous ces 
soucis de chat ne Fempechent pas de bien boire 
son lait le matin et manger sa viande deux fois 
par jour J^ Nor was it all colour of rose to be 
in charge of William. " Figurez-vous,''^ the next 
report ran, ^'que Mussy a devore et ahime com- 
pletement une paire de bas tout neufs que Louise 
s^est achetee hier, Cest un vrai petit diable, mais 
il est si gentil qu^on ne pent vraiment pas le 
gronder pour cela,^^ It was consoling to hear 

105 



Our House 

eventually that William had returned to 
normal pursuits. ^'Mussy est bien sage, il a 
attrape une souris hier dans la cuisine — je 
crois bien que Madame ne trouvera jamais un 
aussi gentil Mussy^ And so the journal of 
William's movements was continued through- 
out our absence. When, leaving J. in Italy, I 
returned to London, — met at midnight at the 
station by M. Auguste with flattering enthusi- 
asm, — Mussy's condition and behaviour cor- 
roborated the weekly bulletins. And not only 
this. Our chambers were as clean as the 
proverbial new pin: everything was in its 
place; not so much as a scrap of paper was 
missing. The only thing that had disappeared 
was the sprinkling of gray in Louise's hair, 
and for this M. Auguste volubly prepared me 
during our walk from the station; she had 
dyed it with almost unforeseen success, he told 
me, so triumphantly that I put down the 
bottle of dye to his extravagance. 

If I know M. Auguste was not a thief, I do 
not think he was a murderer. How could I 
see blood on the hands of the man who pre^ 
sided so joyously over my pots and pans? 

io6 



Louise 

If he were a forger, my trust in him never led 
to abuse of my cheque book; if a deserter, 
how came he to be possessed of his livret mili- 
taire duly signed, as my own eyes are the 
witness ? how could he venture back to France, 
as I know he did for I received from him letters 
with the Paris postmark? An anarchist, J. was 
inclined to believe. But I could not imagine 
him dabbling in bombs and fuses. To be a 
horse-dealer, without horses or money, was 
much more in his line. 

Only of one thing were we sure: however 
hideous or horrible the evil, M. Auguste had 
worked "down there," under the hot sun of 
Provence, Louise had no part in it. She knew 
— it was the reason of her curious reticences, 
of her sacrifice of herself to him. That he loved 
her was inevitable. Who could help loving 
her? She was so intelligent, so graceful, so 
gay. But that she should love M. Auguste 
would have been incomprehensible, were it 
not in the nature of woman to love the man 
who is most selfish in his dependence upon her. 
She did all the work, and he had all the plea- 
sure of it. He was always decently dressed, 

107 



Our House 

there was always money in his pocket, though 
she, who earned It, never had a penny to spend 
on herself. No matter how busy and hurried 
she might be, she had always the leisure to 
talk to him, to amuse him when he came in, 
always the courage to laugh, like the little 
Fleurance in the story. What would yoni 
She was made like that. She had always 
laughed, when she was sad as when she was 
gay. And while she was making life delightful 
for him, she was doing for us what three 
Englishwomen combined could not have done 
so well, and with a charm that all the Eng- 
lishwomen in the world could not have mus- 
tered among them. 

She had been with us about a year when I 
began to notice that, at moments, her face 
was clouded and her smile less ready. At first, 
I put it down to her endless comedy with M. 
Auguste. But, after a bit, it looked as if the 
trouble were more serious even than his histri- 
onics. It was nothing, she laughed when I 
spoke to her; it would pass. And she went on 
amusing and providing for M. Auguste and 
working for us. But by the time the dark days 

io8 



Louise 

of November set in, we were more worried 
about her than ever. The crisis came with 
Christmas. 

On Christmas Day, friends were to dine 
with us, and we invited Mademoiselle, the 
French dressmaker, to eat her Christmas din- 
ner with Louise and M. Auguste. We were 
very staid in the dining-room, — it turned out 
rather a dull affair. But in the kitchen it was 
an uproarious feast. Though she lived some 
distance away, though on Christmas night 
London omnibuses are few and far between. 
Mademoiselle could hardly be persuaded to 
go home, so much was she enjoying herself. 
Louise was all laughter. "You have been 
amused?" I asked, when Mademoiselle y finally 
and reluctantly, had been bundled off by J. 
in a hansom. 

"Mais ouiy mais oui,^ M. Auguste cried, 
pleasure in his voice. "Cette pauvre Made- 
moiselle ! Her life, it is so sad, she is so alone. 
It is good for her to be amused. We have told 
her many stories, — et des histoires un tout 
petit pen salees, n'est-ce pas ? pour e gayer cettf 
pauvre Mademoiselle?^^ 

109 



Our House 

It was the day after the feast that Louise 
had to give in. She confessed she had been 
in torture while she served our dinner and 
Mademoiselle was there. She could hardly eat 
or drink. But why make it sad for all the world 
because she was in pain ? and she had laughed, 
she had laughed! 

We scolded her first. Then we sent her to 
a good doctor. It was worse than we feared. 
The trouble was grave, there must be an opera- 
tion without delay. The big tears rolled down 
her cheeks as she said it. She looked old and 
broken. Why, she moaned, should this sorrow 
come to her? She had never done any harm 
to any one: why should she have to suffer? 
Why, indeed? Her mistake had been to do too 
little harm, too much good, to others, to think 
too little of herself. Now, she had to pay for 
it as one almost always does pay for one's 
good deeds. She worried far less over the pain 
she must bear than over the inconvenience 
to M. Auguste when she could no longer earn 
money for him. 

We wanted her to go into one of the London 
hospitals. We offered to take a room for her 

no 



Louise 

where she could stay after the operation until 
she got back her strength. But we must not 
think her ungrateful, the mere idea of a hos- 
pital made her desperate. And what would she 
do in a room avec un homme comme ga. Be- 
sides, there was the sister in Marseilles, and, 
in the hour of her distress, her sister's horses 
and carriages multiplied like the miraculous 
loaves and fishes, the vintages in the cellar 
doubled in age and strength. And she was 
going to die; it was queer, but one knew those 
things; and she longed to die Id-bas, where 
there was a sun and the sky was blue, where 
she was at home. We knew she had not a 
penny for the journey. M. Auguste had seen 
to that. Naturally, J. gave her the money. 
He would not have had a moment's comfort 
if he had not, — the drain upon your own 
emotions is part of the penalty you pay for 
having a human being and not a machine to 
work for you, — and he added a little more 
to keep her from want on her arrival in Mar- 
seilles, in case the sister had vanished or the 
sister's fortunes had dwindled to their original 
proportions. He exacted but one condition: 

III 



Our House 

M. Auguste was not to know there was more 
than enough for the journey. 

Louise's last days with us were passed in 
tears, — poor Louise ! who until now had 
laughed at fate. It was at this juncture that 
M. Auguste came out strong. I could not 
have believed he had it in him. He no longer 
spent his time dodging J. and dealing in 
visionary horses. He took Louise's place 
boldly. He made the beds, cooked all our 
meals, waited on us, dusted, opened the door, 
while Louise sat, melancholy and forlorn, in 
front of the kitchen fire. On the last day of all 
— she was not to start until the afternoon 
Continental train — she drew me mysteriously 
into the dining-room, she shut the door with 
every precaution, she showed me where she 
had sewed the extra sovereigns in her stays. 
M. Auguste should never know. "/^ P^'^^ 
pour mon lo7ig voyage,^^ she repeated. '' J^ai 
mes pres sentiments.''^ And she was going to 
ask them to let her wear a black skirt I had 
given her, and an old coat of J.'s she had 
turned into a bodice, when the time came to 
lay her in her coffin. Thus something of ours 

112 



Louise 

would go with her on the long journey. How 
could she forget us ? How could we forget her ? 
she might better have asked. I made a thou- 
sand excuses to leave her; Louise playing ''the 
comedy" had never been so tragic as Louise in 
tears. But she would have me back again, and 
again, and again, to tell me how happy she had 
been with us. 

"Why, I was at home," she said, her sur- 
prise not yet outworn. " J^Hais chez moi, et 
fetais si tranquille. I went. I came. Mon- 
sieur entered. He called me. 'Louise,^ — 
^Oui, Monsieur.^ — ' Voulez-vous faire ceci ou 
cela?^ — 'Mais oui, Monsieur, de suite,'* And 
I would do it and Monsieur would say, ' Merci, 
Louise,^ and he would go. And me, I would 
run quick to the kitchen or upstairs to finish 
my work. J^etais si tranquille ! " 

The simplicity of the memories she treasured 
made her story of them pitiful as I listened. 
How little peace had fallen to her lot, that she 
should prize the quiet and homeliness of her 
duties in our chambers ! 

At last it was time to go. She kissed me on 
both cheeks. She gave J. one look, then she 

113 



Our House 

flung herself into his arms and kissed him too 
on both cheeks. She almost strangled William 
Penn. She sobbed so, she could n't speak. 
She clutched and kissed us again. She ran out 
of the door and we heard her sobbing down the 
three flights of stairs into the street. J. hur- 
ried into his workroom. I went back to my 
desk. I don't think we could have spoken 
either. ' 

Two days afterwards, a letter from M. 
Auguste came to our chambers, so empty and 
forlorn without Louise. They were in Paris. 
They had had a dreadful crossing, — he hardly 
thought Louise would arrive at Boulogne 
alive. She was better, but must rest a day or 
two before starting for the Midi, She begged 
us to see that Mussy ate his meals bien regu- 
lierement, and that he "made the dead" from 
time to time, as she had taught him ; and, 
would we write ^ The address was Mr. August, 
Horse - Dealer, Hotel du Cheval Blanc, Rue 
Chat-qui-peche-a-la-ligne, Paris. 

Horse-dealer! Louise might be at death's 
door, but M. Auguste had his position to main- 
tain. Then, after ten long days, came a post- 
114 



Louise 

card, also from Paris : Louise was in Marseilles, 
he was on the point of going, once there he 
would write. Then — nothing. Had he gone f 
Could he go? 

If I were writing a romance it would, with 
dramatic fitness, end here. But if I keep to 
facts, I must add that, in about eight months, 
Louise and M. Auguste reappeared; that both 
were in the best of health and spirits, M. 
Auguste a mass of jewelry; that all the sun- 
shine of Provence seemed let loose in the 
warmth of their greeting; that horse-dealing 
for the moment prospered too splendidly for 
Louise to want to return to us, — or was this 
a new invention, I have always wondered, 
because she found in her place another French- 
woman who wept at the prospect of being dis- 
missed to make room for her.^* 

Well, anyway, for a while, things, according 
to Louise, continued to prosper. She would 
pay me friendly visits and ask for sewing, — 
her afternoons were so long, — and tell me of 
M. Auguste' s success, and of Provence, though 
there were the old reticences. By degrees, a 
shadow fell over the gaiety. I fancied that 

115 



Our House 

"the comedy" was being played faster than 
ever in the Soho lodgings. And, of a sudden, 
the fabric of prosperity collapsed like a house 
of cards. She was ill again, and again an 
operation was necessary. There was not a 
penny in her pockets nor in M. Auguste's. 
What happened ? Louise had only to smile, and 
we were her slaves. But this time, for us at 
least, the end had really come. We heard 
nothing more from either of them. No letters 
reached us from Paris, no post-cards. Did she 
use the money to go back to Marseilles ? Did 
she ever leave London? Did M. Auguste's 
fate overtake him when they crossed the 
Channel? Were the Soho lodgings the scene 
of some tremendous crime passionel ^ For 
weeks I searched the police reports in my 
morning paper. But neither then nor to this 
day have I had a trace of the woman who, for 
over a year, gave to life in our chambers the 
comfort and the charm of her presence. She 
vanished. 

I am certain, though, that wherever she 
may be, she is mothering M. Auguste, squan- 
dering upon him all the wealth of her industry, 
Ii6 



Louise 

her gaiety, her unselfishness. She could n't 
help herself, she was made that way. And the 
worst, the real tragedy of it, is that she would 
rather endure every possible wrong with M. 
Auguste than, without him, enjoy all the 
rights women not made that way would give 
her if they could. She has convinced me of the 
truth I already more than suspected: it is 
upon the M. Augustes of this world that the 
Woman Question will eventually be wrecked. 



IV 

Our Charwomen 



IV 



OUR CHARWOMEN 

I TOOK over the charwoman with our cham- 
bers, and a great piece of luck I thought it; for 
charwomen never advertise, and are unheard 
of in Registry Offices. It was certain I could 
not get into the chambers without one, and at 
that early stage of my housekeeping in Lon- 
don I should not have known where in the 
world to look for her. 

Mrs. Maxfielde was the highly respectable 
name of the woman who had "done" for the 
previous tenant, and had she heard of Mr. 
Shandy's theory of names she could not have 
been more successful in adapting her person 
and her manner to her own. She was well over 
sixty, and thin and gaunt as if she had never 
had enough to eat; but age and hunger had 
not lessened her hold upon the decencies of 
life. Worthiness oozed from her. Victorian 
was stamped all over her, — it was in her 

121 



Our House 

black shawl and bonnet, in the meekness of 
her pose, in the little curtsy she bobbed when 
she spoke. I remember Harold Frederic see- 
ing her once and, with the intuition of the 
novelist, placing her: "Who is your old 
Queen Victoria?" he asked. Her presence 
lost nothing when she took off her shawl and 
bonnet. In the house and at work she wore 
a black dress and a white apron, surprisingly 
clean considering the dirt she exposed it to, 
and her grey hair was drawn tight back and 
rolled into a little hard knob, the scant supply 
and "the parting all too wide" painfully 
exposed to view. I longed for something to 
cover the old grey head that looked so grand- 
motherly and out of keeping as it bent over 
scrubbing-brushes and dustpans and the kitchen 
range, but it would have been against all the 
conventions for a charwoman to appear in a 
servant's cap. There is a rigid line in these 
English matters, and to attempt to step across 
is to face the contempt of those who draw 
it. The British charwoman must go capless, 
such is the unwritten law; also, she must re- 
main "Miss" or "Mrs.," though the Empire 

122 



Our Charwomen 

would totter were the British servant called 
by anything but her name; and while the 
servant would "forget her place" were she to 
know how to do any work outside her own, 
the charwoman is expected to meet every 
emergency, and this was in days when house- 
keeping for me was little more than a long 
succession of emergencies. 

Mrs. Maxfielde was equal to all. She saw 
me triumphantly through one domestic crisis 
after another. She was the most accomplished 
of her accomplished class, and the most willing. 
She was never discouraged by the magnitude 
of the tasks I set her, nor did she ever take 
advantage of my dependence upon her. On the 
contrary, she let me take advantage of her will- 
ingness. She cleaned up after the British Work- 
man had been in possession for a couple of 
months, and one of the few things the British 
Workman can do successfully is to leave dirt to 
be cleaned up. She helped me move in and settle 
down. She supported me through my trying epi- 
sode with 'Enrietter. And after 'Enrietter's dis- 
appearance she saved me from domestic chaos, 
though the work and the hours involved would 

123 



Our House 

have daunted a woman half her age and out- 
raged every trade-union in the country. She 
arrived at seven in the morning, and I quickly 
handed over to her the key of the frontdoor, 
that I might indulge in the extra hour of sleep 
of which she was so much more in need; she 
stayed until eight in the evening, or, at my 
request, until nine or later; and in between 
she "did" for me in the fullest sense of that 
expressive word. There were times when it 
meant "doing" also for my friends whom I 
was inconsiderate enough to invite to come 
and see me in my domestic upheaval, putting 
their friendship to the test still further by 
inducing them to share the luncheons and 
dinners of Mrs. Maxfielde's cooking. Many 
as were her good points, I cannot in conscience 
say that cooking was among them. Hers 
might have been the vegetables of which 
Heine wrote that they were brought to the 
table just as God made them, hers the gravies 
against which he prayed Heaven to keep 
every Christian. But I thought it much to be 
thankful for that she could cook at all when, 
to judge from the amount she ate, she could 

124 



Our Charwomen 

have had so little practice in cooking for her- 
self. She did not need to go through any "fast 
cure," having done nothing but fast all her 
life. She had got out of the way of eating and 
into the way of starving; the choicest dish 
would not have tempted her. The one thing 
she showed the least appetite for was her 
" 'arf pint" at noon, and that she would not do 
without though she had to fetch it from the 
"public" round the corner. I cannot say with 
greater truth that Mrs. Maxiielde's talent lay 
in waiting, but she never allowed anything 
or anybody to hurry her, and she was noiseless 
in her movements, both excellent things in a 
waitress. I cannot even say that in her own 
line of scrubbing she was above suspicion, but 
she handled her brushes and brooms and 
dusters with a calm and dignity which, in my 
troubles, I found very soothing. Her repose may 
have been less a virtue than the result of want 
of proper food, but in any case it was a great 
help in the midst of the confusion she was called 
to struggle with. There was only one drawback. 
It had a way of deserting her just when I was 
most in need of it. 

125 



Our House 

We are all human, and Mrs. Maxfielde was 
not without her weakness: she was afflicted 
with nerves. In looking back I can see how in 
character her sensibility was. It belonged to 
the old shawl and the demure bonnet, to the 
meekness of pose, to the bobbing of curtsies, — 
it was Victorian. But at the time I was more 
struck by its inconvenience. A late milkman 
or a faithless butcher would bring her to the 
verge of collapse. She would jump at the over- 
boiling of the kettle. Her hand went to her 
heart on the slightest provocation, and stayed 
there with a persistency that made me suspect 
her of seeking her dissipation in disaster. On 
the morning after our fire, though she had 
been at home in her own bed through all the 
danger of it, she was in such a flutter that I 
should have had to revive her with salts had 
not a dozen firemen, policemen, and salvage 
men been waiting for her to refresh them with 
tea. It was only when one of the firemen took 
the kettle from her helpless hand, saying he 
was a family man himself, and when I stood 
sternly over her that, like an elderly Char- 
lotte, she fell to cutting bread and butter, 

126 



Our Charwomen 

and regained the calm and dignity becoming 
to her. But I never saw her so agitated as the 
day she met a rat in the cellar. I had sup- 
posed it was only in comic papers and old- 
fashioned novels that a rat or a mouse could 
drive a sensible woman into hysterics. But 
Mrs. Maxfielde showed me my mistake. From 
that innocent encounter in the cellar she 
bounded up the four flights of stairs, burst 
into my room, and, breathless, livid, both 
hands on her heart, sank into a chair: a lib- 
erty which at any other time she would have 
regarded as a breach of all the proprieties. 
"Oh, mum!" she gasped, "in the cellar! — a 
rat!" And she was not herself again until the 
next morning. 

After her day's work and her excitement in 
the course of it, it seemed as if Mrs. Max- 
fielde could have neither time nor energy for a 
life of her own outside our chambers. But she 
had, and a very full life it was, and with the 
details as she confided them to me, I got to 
know a great deal about "how the poor live," 
which I should have preferred to learn from 
a novel or a Blue Book. She had a husband, 

127 



Our House 

much older, who had been paralyzed for years. 
Before she came to me in the morning she had to 
get him up*for the day, give him his breakfast, 
and leave everything in order for him, and as 
she lived half an hour's walk from our chambers 
and never failed to reach them by seven, there 
was no need to ask how early she had to get 
herself up. For a few pence a friendly neigh- 
bour looked in and attended to him during the 
day. After Mrs. Maxfielde left me, at eight 
or nine or ten in the evening, and after her 
half hour's walk back, she had to prepare his 
supper and put him to bed; and again I did 
not have to ask how late she put her own weary 
self there too. Old age was once said to begin 
at forty-six; we are more strenuous now; but 
according to the kindest computations, it had 
well overtaken her. And yet she was working 
harder than she probably ever had in her 
youth, with less rest and with the pleasing 
certainty that she would go on working day 
in and day out and never succeed in securing 
the mere necessities of life. She might have 
all the virtues, sobriety, industry, economy, 
— and she had, — and the best she could 

128' 



Our Charwomen 

hope was just to keep soul and body together 
for her husband and herself, and a little corner 
they could call their own. She did not tell me 
how the husband earned a living before 
paralysis kept him from earning anything at 
all, but he too must have been worthy of his 
name, for now he was helpless, the parish 
allowed him "outdoor relief" to the extent of 
three shillings and sixpence, or about eighty 
cents a week; it was before old-age pensions 
had been invented by a vote-touting Govern- 
ment. This munificent sum, paid for a room 
somewhere in a "Building," one of those 
gloomy barracks with the outside iron stair- 
way in common, where clothes are forever 
drying in the thick, soot-laden London air, and 
children are forever howling and shrieking. For 
everything else Mrs. Maxfielde had to provide. 
If she worked every day except Sunday, her 
earnings amounted to fifteen shillings, or a 
little less than four dollars, a week. But there 
were weeks when she could obtain only one 
day's work, weeks when she could obtain 
none, and she and her husband had still to 
live, had still to eat something, well as they had 

129 



Our House 

trained themselves, as so many must, in the 
habit of not eating enough. Here was an eco- 
nomic problem calculated to bewilder more 
youthful and brilliant brains than hers. But 
she never complained, she never grumbled, 
she never got discouraged. She might fly 
before a rat, but in the face of the hopeless 
horrors of life she retained her beautiful 
placidity, though I, when I realized the full 
weight of the burden she had to bear, began 
to wonder less how, than why, the poor live. 
Mrs. Maxfielde came in the early spring. 
By the time winter, with its fogs, set in, age 
had so far overtaken her that she could not 
manage to attend to her husband and his 
wants and then drag her old body to our 
chambers by seven o'clock in the morning. 
It was she who gave notice; I never should have 
had the courage. We parted friends, and she 
was so amiable as not to deprive me of her 
problems with her services. When she could 
not work for me, she visited me, making it her 
rule to call on Monday afternoon; a rule she 
observed with such regularity that I fancied 
Monday must be her day for collecting the 

130 



Our Charwomen 

husband's income from the parish and her 
own from private sources. She rarely allowed 
a week to pass without presenting herself, 
always appearing in the same Victorian cos- 
tume and carrying off the interview with the 
same Victorian manner. She never stooped to 
beg, but her hand was ready for the coin 
which I slipped into it with the embarrass- 
ment of the giver, but which she received with 
enviable calmness and a little curtsy. The 
hour of her visit was so timed that, when her 
talk with me was over, she could adjourn to 
the kitchen for dinner and, under Augustine's 
rule, a glass of wine, which, though beer would 
have been more to her taste, she drank as a 
concession to the poor foreigner who did not 
know any better. 

Before a second winter had passed, Mrs. 
Maxfielde was forced to admit that she was 
too old for anybody to want her, or to accept 
a post if anybody did. But, all the same, the 
paralytic clung to his shadow of life with the 
obstinate tenacity of the human derelict, and 
she clung to her idea of home, and they starved 
on in the room the parish paid for until it was 

131 



Our House 

a positive relief to me when, after more years 
of starvation than I cared to count, she came 
to announce his death. It was no rehef to her. 
She was full of grief, and permitted nothing 
to distract her from the luxury she made of it. 
The coin which passed from my hand to hers 
on the occasion of this visit, doubled in token 
of condolence, was invested in an elaborate 
crape bonnet, and she left it to me to worry 
about her future. I might have afforded to 
accept her trust with a greater show of enthu- 
siasm, for, at once and with unlooked-for in- 
telligence, the parish decided to allow her the 
same weekly sum her husband had received, 
and Mrs. Maxfielde, endowed with this large 
and princely income, became a parent so 
worthy of filial devotion that a daughter I had 
never heard of materialized, and expressed a 
desire to share her home with her mother. 

The daughter was married, her husband was 
an unskilled labourer, and they had a large 
and increasing family. It is likely that Mrs. 
Maxfielde paid in more than money for the 
shelter, and that her own flesh-and-blood was 
less chary than strangers would have been in 

132 



Our Charwomen 

employing her services, and less mindful of 
the now more than seventy years she had 
toiled to live. Perhaps her visits at this period 
were a little more frequent, perhaps her din- 
ners were eaten and her wine drunk with a 
little more eagerness. But she refrained from 
any pose, she indulged in no heroics, she en- 
tertained me with no whinings, no railings 
against the ingratitude sharper than a ser- 
pent's tooth. However she got her ease, it was 
not in weeping, and what she had to bear from 
her daughter she bore in silence. Her Victorian 
sense of propriety would have been offended 
by a display of feeling. She became so pitiful 
a figure that I shrank from her visits. But she 
was content, she found no fault with life, and 
wealth being a matter of comparison, I am 
sure she was, in her turn, moved to pity for 
the more unfortunate who had not kept them- 
selves out of the workhouse. Had she had her 
way, she would have been willing to slave 
indefinitely for her daughter and her daugh- 
ter's children. But Death was wiser and 
brought her the rest she deserved so well and 
so little craved. 

133 



Our House 

A couple of years or so after the loss of her 
husband, and after she had failed to appear, 
much to my surprise, on three or four Mon- 
days in succession, a letter came from her 
daughter to tell me that never again would 
Monday bring Mrs. Maxfielde to my cham- 
bers. There had been no special illness. She 
had just worn out, that was all. Her time had 
come after long and cruel days of toil and her 
passing was unnoted, for hers was a place 
easily filled, — that was the grisly thing about 
it. J. and I sent a wreath of flowers for the 
funeral, knowing that she would have wel- 
comed it as propriety's crown of propriety, 
and it was my last communication with the 
Maxfielde family. I had never met the 
daughter, and I was the more reluctant to go 
abroad in search of objects of charity because 
they had such an inconsiderate way of seek- 
ing me out in my own kitchen. I was already 
"suited" with another old woman in Mrs. 
Maxfielde's place. I was already visited by 
one or two others. In fact, I was so surrounded 
by old women that Augustine, when she first 
came to the rescue, used to laugh with the 

134 



Our Charwomen 

insolence of youth at les vieilles jemmes de 
Madame. 

My new old woman was Mrs. Burden. Had 
I hunted all London over, I could not have 
found a more complete contrast to Mrs. Max- 
fielde. She was Irish, with no respect for Vic- 
torian proprieties, but as disreputable looking 
an old charwoman as you would care to see; 
large and floppy in figure, elephantine in 
movement, her face rough and dug deep by 
the trenches of more than fifty winters, her 
hair frowzy, her dress ragged, with the bodice 
always open at the neck and the sleeves always 
rolled up above the elbows, her apron an old 
calico rag, and her person and her clothes 
profusely sprinkled with snuff. In the street 
she wrapped herself in a horrible grey blanket- 
shawl, and on top of her disorderly old head 
set a little battered bonnet with two wisps of 
strings dangling about. When I knew her 
better I discovered that she owned a black 
shawl with fringe, and a bonnet that could 
tie under the chin, and in these made a very 
fine appearance. But they were reserved for 
such ceremonial occasions as Mass on Sunday 

135 



Our House 

or the funeral of a friend, and at other times 
she kept to the costume that so shamefully 
maligned her. For, if she looked like one of 
the terrible harpies who hang about the public 
house in every London slum, she was really 
the most sober creature in the world and never 
touched a drop, Mr. Burden, who drank him- 
self into an early grave, having drunk enough 
for two. 

I cannot remember now where Mrs. Burden 
came from, or why, when I had seen her once, 
I ever consented to see her again. But she 
quickly grew into a fixture in our chambers, 
and it was some eight or nine years before I 
was rid of her. In the beginning she was en- 
gaged for three mornings, later on for every 
morning, in the week. Her hours were from 
seven to twelve, during which time my chief 
object was to keep her safely shut up in the 
kitchen, for no degree of pretending on my 
part could make me believe in her as an orna- 
ment or a credit to our house. It mortified me 
to have her show her snuffy old face at the 
front door, and I should never have dared to 
send her on the many messages she ran for me 

136 



Our Charwomen 

had she not been known to everybody in the 
Quarter; but once Mrs. Burden was known it 
was all right, for she was as good as she was 
sober. Hers, however, was the goodness of the 
man in the Italian proverb who was so good 
that he was good for nothing. She was willing 
to do anything, but there was nothing she 
could do well, and most things she could not 
do at all. She made no pretence to cook, and 
if she had I could not have eaten anything 
of her cooking, for I knew snuff must flavour 
everything she touched. To have seen her 
big person and frowzy head in the dining-room 
would have been fatal to appetite had I ever 
had the folly, under any circumstances, to ask 
her to wait. Nor did she excel in scrubbing 
and dusting. She was successful chiefly in 
leaving things dirtier than she found them, 
and Augustine, whose Ideal is high in these 
matters, insisted that Mrs. Burden spent the 
morning making the dirt she had to spend 
the afternoon cleaning up. There were times 
when they almost came to blows, for the 
temper of both was hot, and more than once 
I heard Mrs. Burden threaten to call in the 

137 



Our House 

police. But the old woman had her uses. 
She was honesty itself, and could be trusted 
with no matter what, — from the key of our 
chambers, when they were left empty, to the 
care of William Penn, when no other compan- 
ion could be secured for him; she could be 
relied upon to pay bills, post letters, fetch 
parcels; and she was as punctual as Big Ben 
at Westminster. I do not think she missed a 
day in all the years she was with me. I be- 
came accustomed, too, to seeing her about, 
and there was the dread — or conviction 
would be nearer the truth — that if I let her 
go nobody else in their senses would take her 
in. 

Mrs. Burden did not improve with time. 
She never condescended to borrow qualities 
that did not belong to her. She grew more 
unwieldy and larger and floppier, a misfortune 
she attributed to some mysterious malady 
which she never named, but gloated over with 
the pride the poor have in their diseases. And 
she grew dirtier and more disorderly, continu- 
ing to scorn my objection to her opening the 
front door with the shoe she was blacking still 

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Our Charwomen 

on her hand, or to her bringing me a letter 
wrapped in an apron grimier than her grimy- 
fingers. Nothing would induce her not to call 
me "Missis," which displeased me more, if 
for other reasons, than the "Master" she as 
invariably bestowed upon J. She bobbed no 
curtsies. When, on Saturdays, coins passed 
from my hand to hers, she spat on them 
before she put them in her pocket, to what 
purpose I have not to this day divined. Her 
best friend could not have accused her of any 
charm of manner, but, being Irish, she escaped 
the vulgarity bred in the London slums. In 
fact, I often fancied I caught gleams of what 
has been called the Celtic Temperament 
shining through her. She had the warmth of 
devotion, the exaggeration of loyalty, the 
power of idealizing, peculiar to her race. She 
was almost lyrical in her praise of J., who 
stood highest in her esteem, and "Master 
good! Master good!" was her constant re- 
frain when she conversed with Augustine in 
the language fitted for children and rich in 
gesture, which was her well-meant substitute 
for French. She saw him glorified, as the poets 

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Our House 

of her country see their heroes, and in her eyes 
he loomed a splendid Rothschild. "Master, 
plenty money, plenty money!" she would 
assure Augustine, and, holding up her apron 
by the two corners, and well out from her so 
as to represent a capacious bag, add, "apron 
full, full, full!" 

She had also the Celtic lavishness of hos- 
pitality. I remember Whistler's delight one 
morning when, after an absence from London, 
he received at our front door a welcome from 
Mrs. Burden, whom he had never seen be- 
fore and now saw at her grimiest: "Shure, 
Mr. Whistler, sir, an it's quite a stranger ye 
are. It's glad I am to see ye back, sir, and 
looking so well!" Her hospitality was ex- 
tended to her own friends when she had the 
chance. She who drank nothing could not 
allow Mr. Pooley, the sweep, who was her 
neighbour and cleaned our chimneys, to leave 
our chambers after his professional services 
without a drop of whiskey to hearten him on 
his sooty way. And, though you would still 
less have suspected it, romance had kept its 
bloom fresh in her heart. The summer the 

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Our Charwomen 

Duke of York was married I could not under- 
stand her interest In the wedding, as until then 
she had not specially concerned herself with 
the affairs of royalty. But on the wedding- 
day this interest reached a point when she had 
to share it with somebody. "Shure, Missis, 
and I knows how it is meself . Was n't I after 
marrying Burden's brother and he older than 
Burden, and did n't he go and die, God bless 
him! and leave me to Burden. And shure thin 
it's me that knows how the poor Princess May, 
Lord love her! is feeling this blessed day!" 

Not only the memory, but her pride in it, 
had survived the years which never brought 
romance to her again. The one decent thing 
Burden did was to die and rid the world of 
him before Mrs. Burden had presented him 
and society with more than one child, a boy. 
He was a good son, she said, which meant that 
he spent his boyhood picking up odd jobs 
and, with them, odd pence to help his mother 
along, so that at the age when he should have 
been able to do something, he knew how to 
do nothing, and had not even the physical 
strength to fit him for the more profitable 

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Our House 

kinds of unskilled labour. He thought himself 
lucky when, in his twentieth year, he fell into 
a place as "washer-up" in a cheap restaurant 
which paid eighteen shillings a week; and he 
was so dazzled by his wealth that he promptly 
married. His wife's story is short: she drank. 
Mercifully, like Burden, she did the one thing 
she could do with all her might and drank 
herself to death with commendable swiftness, 
leaving no children to carry on the family 
tradition. Mrs. Burden was once more alone 
with her son. Between them they earned 
twenty-eight shillings a week and felt them- 
selves millionaires. Augustine, for some rea- 
son, went at this period once or twice to her 
room, over the dingy shop of a cheap under- 
taker, and reported it fairly clean and pro- 
vided with so much comfort as is represented 
by blankets on the bed and a kettle on the 
hob. But' after a bit the son died, the cause, 
as far as I could make out, a drunken father 
and years of semi-starvation; and Mrs. Burden 
had to face, as cheerfully as she could, an old 
age to be lived out in loneliness and in the 
vain endeavour to make both ends meet on 

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Our Charwomen 

eight shillings a week, or less if she lost her 
job with me. 

She did lose it, poor soul. But what could 
I do.f* She really got to be intolerably dirty. 
Not that I blamed her. I probably should have 
been much dirtier under the same circum- 
stances. But a time came when it seemed as 
if we must give up either Mrs. Burden or our 
chambers, and to give our chambers up when 
we had not the least desire to, would have 
been a desperate remedy. She had one other 
piece of regular work; when I spoke to her 
about going, she assured me that her neigh- 
bours had been waiting for years to get her 
to do their washing, and she would be glad to 
oblige them; and, on my pressing invitation, 
she promised to run in and see me often. At 
this new stage in our relations she showed a 
rare delicacy of feeling. Mrs. Maxiielde, no 
longer in my service, was eager to pay me 
visits, and her hand, if not held out to beg, was 
open to receive. Mrs. Burden did not keep her 
promise to come, she gave me no opportunity 
to know whether her hand was open in need 
or shut on plenty. She was of the kind that 

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Our House 

would rather starve than publish their desti- 
tution. I might have preserved an easy con- 
science in her regard but for Mr. Pooley, the 
sweep. The first time he returned in his pro- 
fessional capacity after her departure and 
found himself deprived of the usual refresh- 
ment, he was indignant, and, in consequence, 
he was very gruff and short with me when I 
inquired after Mrs. Burden. She had n't any 
work, not she, and he supposed, he did, that 
she might starve for all some people cared. 

I could scarcely ignore so broad a hint, and 
I had her round that same morning, for her 
slum was close by. I learned from her that 
Mr. Pooley, if gruff, was truthful. She had no 
work, had not had any for weeks. She was in 
arrears to her landlord, her shawl with the 
fringe and her blankets were in pawn, she 
had n't a farthing in her pocket. J., to whom 
I refer all such matters, and who was in her 
debt for the splendour of wealth with which 
she had endowed him, said "it was all non- 
sense," — by "it" I suppose he meant this 
sorry scheme of things, — and he would not 
let her go without the money to pay her 

144 



Our Charwomen 

landlord, not only for arrears, but in advance, 
and also to redeem her possessions. I do not 
think she was the less grateful if, instead of 
bobbing humbly, she spat upon the coins 
before her first "Shu re and may God bless ye, 
Master." Nor was J. comfortable until pro- 
visions had followed her in such quantities 
that he would not have to be bothered by the 
thought of her starving to death, at any rate 
for some days. Even after that, she scrupu- 
lously kept away. Not Christmas, that in 
London brings everybody with or without 
excuse begging at one's door, could induce her 
to present herself. It was we who had to send 
for her, and, in a land where begging comes so 
easily, we respected her for her independence. 
I doubt if she ever got more work to do. 
She never received outdoor relief, according 
to her because of some misunderstanding be- 
tween the parish church and hers, for, being 
Irish, she was a devout Roman Catholic. I do 
not know how she lived, though perhaps they 
could have told me in her slum, nobody, they 
say, being as good to the poor as the poor 
themselves. But it was part of her delicacy 

145 



Our House 

to take herself off our hands and conscience 
within less than a year of her leaving us, and 
to die in her room peacefully of pneumonia, 
when she might have made us uncomfortable 
by dying of starvation, or lingering on in the 
workhouse. Mr. Pooley, the sweep, brought 
this news too. She was buried decent, he vol- 
unteered; she had taken care of that, though 
as poor as you want to see. A good old woman, 
he added, and it was all the obituary she had. 
He was right. She was of the best, but then 
she was only one "of the millions of bubbles" 
poured into existence to-day to vanish out of 
it to-morrow, of whom the world is too busy 
to keep count. 

After Mrs. Burden, I went to the Quartler — 
the French Quarter in Soho — for a char- 
woman. Had I been tempted, as I never was, 
to believe in the entente cordiale^ of which Eng- 
land was just then beginning to make great cap- 
ital, affairs in my own kitchen would have con- 
vinced me of the folly of it. Things there had 
come to a pass when any pretence of cordial- 
ity, except the cordial dislike which France 
and England have always cherished for each 

146 



Our Charwomen 

other and always will, had been given up, and 
if I hoped to escape threats of police and per- 
petual squabbles on the subject of cleanliness, 
there was nothing for it but to adopt a single- 
race policy. When it came to deciding which 
that race should be, I did not hesitate, having 
found out for myself that the French are as 
clean as the English believe themselves to be. 
The Quartier could not be more French if it 
were in the heart of France. There is nothing 
French that is not to be had in it, from snails 
and houdin to the Petit Journal and the latest 
thing in aperitifs. The one language heard is 
French, when it is not Italian, and the people 
met there have an animation that is not a 
characteristic of Kensington or Bayswater. 
The only trouble is that if the snails are of 
the freshest and the aperitifs bear the best 
mark, the quality of the people imported into 
the Quartier is more doubtful. Many have left 
their country for their country's good. When 
I made my mission known, caution was recom- 
mended to me by Madame who presides chez 
le patissier, and Monsieur le Gros, as he is 
familiarly known, who provides me with gro- 

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Our House 

ceries, and M. Edmond from whom I buy my 
vegetables and salads at the Quatre Saisons, 
England, in the mistaken name of liberty, then 
opened her door to the riff-raff of all nations, 
and French prisons were the emptier for the 
indiscriminate hospitality of Soho, or so I was 
assured by the decent French who feel the dis- 
honour the Quartier is to France. 

Caution served me well in the first instance, 
for I began my experience in French char- 
women with Marie, a little B re tonne, young, 
cheerful, and if, like a true Bretonne, not over 
clean by nature, so willing to be bullied into 
it that she got to scrub floors and polish 
brasses as if she liked it. She never sulked, 
never minded a scolding from Augustine who 
scolds us all when we need it, did not care how 
long she stayed over time, had a laugh that 
put one in good humour to hear it, and such 
a healthy appetite that she doubled my weekly 
bill at the baker's. Even Augustine found no 
fault. But one fault there was. She was mar- 
ried. In the course of time a small son arrived 
who made her laugh more gaily than ever, 
though he added a third to the family of a not 

148 



Our Charwomen 

too brilliant young man with an income of a 
pound a week, and I was again without a char- 
woman. 

Marie helped me to forget caution, and I 
put down the stories heard in the Quartier to 
libel. But I had my awakening. She was suc- 
ceeded by another B re tonne, a wild, fright- 
ened-looking creature, who, on her second day 
with me, when I went into the kitchen to speak 
to her, sat down abruptly in the fireplace, the 
fire by good luck still unlit, and I did not have 
to ask an explanation, for it was given me by 
the empty bottle on the dresser. Her dull, sot- 
tish face haunted me for days afterwards, and 
I was oppressed, as I am sure she never was, 
by the thought of the blundering fate that had 
driven her from the windswept shores of her 
own Brittany to the foul slums of London. 

But I could not take over the mysteries and 
miseries of Soho with its charwomen; it was 
about as much as I could do to keep up with 
the procession that followed her. There was 
no variety of femme de menage in the Quartier 
that I did not sample, nor one who was not 
the heroine of a tragedy or romance, too often 

149 



Our House 

not in retrospection or anticipation, but at its 
most psychological moment. I remember an- 
other Marie, good-looking, but undeniably 
elderly, whose thoughts were never with the 
floor she was scrubbing or the range she was 
black-leading, because they were absorbed in 
the impecunious youth, half her age, with 
whom she had fallen in love in the fashion of 
to-day, and for whom she had given up a life 
of comparative ease with her husband, a well- 
paid chef, I remember a Marthe, old and with- 
ered, whose tales of want were so heartrending 
that Augustine lavished upon her all the old 
clothes of the establishment and all the "cold 
pieces" in the kitchen, but who, we learned 
afterwards, had a neat little bank-account at 
the Credit Lyonnais and a stocking stuffed to 
overflowing in the bare garret where she shiv- 
ered and starved. I remember a trim Julie, 
whose debts left behind in France kept her 
nose to the grindstone, but who found it some 
compensation to work for J. : she felt a peculiar 
sympathy for all artists, she said, for the good 
reason, which seemed to us a trifle remote, that 
her husband's mother had been foster-mother 

150 



Our Charwomen 

to le grand maitre, M. Detaille. And there was 
a Blanche, abandoned by her husband, and left 
with three small children to feed, clothe, and 
bring up somehow. And there were I have for- 
gotten how many more, each with a story 
tragic or pitiful, until it came to Clementine, 
and her story was so sordid that when I parted 
with her I shook the dust of Soho from off my 
feet, and imported from the Pas -de-Calais a 
little girl whose adventures I hoped were still 
in the future which, if I could manage it, 
would be postponed indefinitely. It may be 
true that every woman has one good novel 
in her life, but I did not see why I should 
keep on engaging charwomen to prove it. 



V 

Clementine 



CLEMENTINE 

She drifted in from the Quartier, but the 
slovenliness and shabby finery of her dress 
made it hard to believe she was French. It 
was harder to believe she was grown up when 
she began to talk, for her voice was that of a 
child, a high shrill treble, with a babyish lisp, 
losing itself in giggles. And she was so short, 
so small, that she might easily have passed 
herself off as a little girl, but for the marks 
experience had left upon her face. I suppose 
she was not much under thirty when she first 
came to me. 

How cruel this experience had been she took 
immediate care to explain. With her first few 
words she confided to me that she was hungry, 
and, in my embarrassment on hearing it, I 
engaged her before it occurred to me to ask for 
references. Hunger does not exactly qualify a 
woman, however willing, for the rough worl^ 

155 



Our House 

that must be done in a house, and that it is so 
surprising anybody ever should be willing to 
do. I engaged her to scrub the floors, black 
the shoes, clean the fireplaces, polish the 
brasses, — to pass every morning, except Sun- 
day, from seven to two, in fighting the London 
dirt for me, and struggling through all those 
disagreeable and tiresome tasks that not any 
amount of money would induce me to strug- 
gle through for myself. 

As her duties were of a kind usually kept in 
the domestic background, and as she brought 
to them an energy her hunger had not pre- 
pared me for, an occasional hon jour when we 
met might have been the extent of my per- 
sonal relations with her, had it not been for 
my foolish anxiety as to the state of her appe- 
tite. I had kept house long enough to under- 
stand the mistake of meddling with the affairs 
of my servants, but Clementine, with her ab- 
surd little voice and giggle, seemed much less 
a servant than a child making believe to be 
one. Besides, I found that, though I can hear 
of unknown thousands starving in London 
without feeling called upon to interfere, it is 

156 



Clementine 

another matter to come face to face with a 
hungry individual under my own roof. 

Augustine, who was then, as she is now, the 
prop and mainstay of our Hfe, reassured me; 
Clementine, it seemed, from the moment of 
her arrival, had been eating as voraciously 
as if she were bent not only on satisfying the 
present, but on making up for the past and 
providing against the future. She could not 
pass the interval between eight o'clock coffee 
and the noonday lunch without un petit gouter 
to sustain her. At all hours she kept munching 
bits of crust, and after the heartiest meal she 
would fall, famished, upon our plates as they 
came from the dining-room, devouring any 
odd scraps left on them, feasting on cheese- 
rinds and apple-parings, or, though I regret 
to have to record it, licking up the gravy and 
grease, if there was nothing better. Indeed, 
her condition was one of such chronic hunger 
that Augustine grew alarmed and thought a 
doctor should be consulted. I put it down to 
the long succession of her lean years, and 
before the facts convinced me that Clementine 
was "all stomach and no soul," her appetite 

157 



Our House 

was a great deal on my mind, and made me 
far more preoccupied with her than was wise. 
My inquiries into the state of Clementine's 
appetite were the reason for many conversa- 
tions. I have no doubt that at first I encour- 
aged her confidence, so unfailing was my de- 
light in the lisping prattle, interrupted by 
giggles, with which they were made. Even J., 
who as a rule is glad to leave all domestic mat- 
ters to me, would stop and speak to her for the 
sake of hearing her talk. And she was a child 
in so many other ways. She had the vanity 
as well as the voice of a little girl. She was 
pretty after a fashion, but it always amazed 
me that anybody who was so hungry could be 
so vain. When I am hungry I am too demor- 
alized to care how I look. But Clementine's 
respect for her appearance was, if anything, 
stronger than her craving for food. She would 
have gone without a meal rather than have 
appeared out of the fashion set by her London 
slum. Her hair might be half combed, — that 
was a question of personal taste, — but she 
could not show herself abroad unless it was 
brought down over her forehead in the low 

158 



Clementine 

wave required by the mode of the moment, 
and hidden at the back under a flat, overgrown 
jockey-cap fastened on with long pins. Her 
skirt might be — or rather was — frayed at 
the bottom, and her jacket worn to shreds, 
but she could never neglect to tie round her 
neck a bit of white tulle or ribbon, however 
soiled or faded. Nor could she be persuaded to 
run the shortest errand before this tulle or rib- 
bon, taken oif for work, had been tied on again, 
the low wave of hair patted well in place, and 
the jockey-cap stuck at the correct angle. 

It w^as useless to try and hurry her. She 
did not care how urgent the errand was to us, 
her concern was entirely for what people in the 
street might think of her if any one detail of 
her toilet was neglected. Augustine, who for 
herself was disdainful of the opinion of ces 
sales Anglais and ran her errands en cheveux 
as if she were still in France, would scold and 
thunder and represent to Clementine that 
people in the street had something better to do 
than to think of her at all. When Augustine 
scolds, I am always, to be honest, a little afraid. 
But Clementine would listen giggling, and 

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Our House 

refuse to budge an inch until the last touch 
had been given to her hair and to her dress. 
After working time she could not start for 
home until she had spent half an hour and 
more before the glass in the kitchen arranging 
her rags. In her own country her vanity would 
have been satisfied only by the extreme neat- 
ness and simplicity of her dress. In England 
she had borrowed the untidiness and tawdri- 
ness that degrade the English poor. But if 
the educated French, who ought to know that 
they are the most civilized people in the world, 
grow more English than the English when they 
become Anglicized at all, I could scarcely 
blame Clementine for her weakness. 

To one form of her untidiness, however, I 
objected though, had I known what was to 
come of my objection, I would have borne 
with worse in silence. She never wore an apron, 
and, in her stained and tattered dress, her 
appearance was disreputable even for a char- 
woman. She might be as slovenly as she chose 
in the street, that was her affair; but it was 
mine once she carried her slovenliness inside 
my four walls, especially as in chambers ser- 

i6o 



Clementine 

vants at work are more apt to be stumbled 
across than in a house, and as it was her duty 
at times to open the front door. I spoke to her 
on the subject, suggesting the value of aprons, 
if only as defences. The words were scarcely 
out of my mouth than I would have given 
worlds to take them back again. For when 
Clementine began to talk the difficulty was 
to stop her, and long before she finished ex- 
plaining why she wore no aprons, I had learned 
a great deal more about her than I bargained 
for: among other things, that her previous 
places had been chiefly chez les femmes ; that 
she wanted to give up working for them ; that, 
after leaving her last place, she could get 
nothing to do in any maison bourgeoise ; that 
she had no money and was very hungry, — 
what Clementine's hunger meant she did not 
have to tell me; that her little Ernest was also 
hungry, and also la vieille grandmere ; that her 
little Ernest was her son, — " Oui, Madame, je 
serais franc he, f ai un fils mats pas un mari^\' 
that la vieille grandmere was an old woman 
she had taken in, partly to look after him, 
partly out of sheer shiftlessness; that they 

l6i 



Our House 

could not starve; and that — well — all her 
aprons were au clou. 

This sudden introduction of her little Ernest 
was a trifle disconcerting, but it was none of 
my business how many people depended on 
Clementine, nor how many of her belongings 
were in pawn. I had vowed never again to 
give sympathy, much less help, to anybody 
who worked for me, since I knew to my cost 
the domestic disaster to which benevolence 
of this sort may lead. I gave her advice in- 
stead. I recommended greater thrift, and in- 
sisted that she must save from her wages 
enough to get her aprons out of pawn imme- 
diately, though I left it to a more accomplished 
political economist than I to show how, with 
three to provide for, she could save out of 
what barely provided for one. However, she 
agreed. She said, "Oui, Madame, Madame a 
raison^^; and for the next week or two I did 
my best to shut my eyes to the fact that she 
still went apronless. 

At this juncture, her little Ernest fell ill; 
now that I had heard of him, he took good care 
that I should not forget him. For three days 

162 



Clementine 

there was no sign of Clementine; I had no 
word from her. At the end of the first day, I 
imagined a horrid tragedy of starvation; by 
the second, I was reproaching myself as an 
accessory; by the evening of the third, I could 
stand it no longer, and Augustine was de- 
spatched to find out what was wrong. The 
child's illness was not very serious, but, inci- 
dentally, Augustine found out a good deal 
besides. Clementine's room, in an unlovely 
Workmen's Building, was unexpectedly clean, 
but to keep it clean was the easier because it 
was so bare. Her bed, which she shared with 
her little Ernest, was a mattress on the floor 
in one corner, with not a sheet or a blanket to 
cover it; la vieille grandmere slept in a nest of 
newspapers in another corner, with a roll of 
rags for a pillow. Bedsteads, sheets, covers, 
had gone the way of the aprons, — they, too, 
were au clou. The thrift I had advised scarcely 
met so acute a case of poverty. I was not at 
all anxious to burden myself with Clementine's 
destitution in addition to her hunger, and to 
get it out of my mind, I tried, with my usual 
generosity, to hand over the difficulty to J. 

163 



Our House 

I cannot say that he accepted it as uncondi- 
tionally as I could have wished, for if he was 
positive that something must be done at once, 
he had as little doubt that it was for me to 
discover the way of doing it. 

What I did was simple, though I dare say 
contrary to every scientific principle of charity. 
I told her to bring me her pawn-tickets and 
I would go over them with her. She brought 
them, a pocketful, the next day, throwing 
them down on the table before me and sorting 
them as if for a game of cards, with many 
giggles, and occasional cries of '^Tiens! this 
is my old blue apron"; or, ^'Mon Dieu! this 
is my nice warm grey blanket." Her delight 
could not have been greater had it been the 
apron or the blanket itself. All told, her debts 
amounted to no very ruinous sum, and I 
arranged to pay them off and give her a fresh 
start if, on her side, she was prepared to 
work harder and practise stricter economy. I 
pointed out that as I did not need her in the 
afternoon, she had a half day to dispose of, 
and that she should hunt for something to fill 
it. She promised everything I asked, and 
164 



Clementine 

more, and I hoped that this was the last of 
my sharing her burdens. 

It might have been, but for her little Ernest. 
I do believe that child was born for no other 
end than my special annoyance. His illness 
was only the beginning. When he was well, 
she brought him to see me one afternoon, 
nominally that he might thank me, but really, 
I fear, in hope of an extra sixpence or shilling. 
He was five years old and fairly large and well 
developed for his age, but there could never 
have been, there never could be, a less attrac- 
tive child. His face had none of the prettiness 
of his mother's, though all the shrewdness: 
in knowledge of the gutter he looked fifty. 
Then and afterwards, ashamed as I was of it, 
I instinctively shrank from him. Anywhere, 
except in the comic ballad, a "horribly fast 
little cad" of a baby is as tragic a figure as I 
care to encounter, and to me the little Ernest 
was all the more so because of the repugnance 
with which he inspired me. Clementine made 
a great pretence of adoring him. She carried 
a sadly battered photograph of him in her 
pocket, and would pull it out at intervals when 

165 



Our House 

anybody was looking, and kiss it rapturously. 
Otherwise her admiration took the form of 
submitting to his tyranny. She could do far 
less with him than he with her, and la vieille 
grandmere was as wax in his rough little hands. 
His mornings, while his mother was at work, 
were spent in the grimy London courts and 
streets, where children swarm like vermin and 
babies grow old in vice. In the afternoon, after 
she left our chambers, he dragged her through 
the Quartier, from shop to shop, she with her 
giggling ''Bon jour, M.Edmond,^^ or "Comment 
ca va, Madame Pierre, ^^ — for though we live 
in London we are not of it, but of France, — 
he with his hand held out for the cakes and 
oranges and pennies he knew would drop into 
it: a pair of the most accomplished beggars in 
London. 

As time went on, and Clementine did not 
find the extra work for her afternoons that she 
had promised to find, I realized that she would 
keep on wasting her free half day, and that he 
would go from bad to worse if he were not got 
away from her and out of the streets. I should 
have known better than to occupy myself 

1 66 



Clementine 

with him, but his old shrewd face haunted me 
until I remonstrated with Clementine, and 
represented to her the future she was prepar- 
ing for him. If she could not take care of him, 
she should send him to school where there were 
responsible people who could. I suggested a 
charitable institution of some kind in France 
where he would be brought up among her 
people. But this she fought against with a 
determination I could not understand, until 
it came out that she had profited by the Eng- 
lish law which forces a father to contribute 
to his illegitimate child's support, and from 
Ernest's she received weekly three shillings 
and sixpence. She much preferred to risk her 
little Ernest's morals than an income that 
came of itself, and she feared she could no 
longer claim it if he were beyond the reach of 
the English courts. She was as doubtful of the 
result if he were got into a charity school in 
England, for if he cost her nothing the father 
might not be compelled to pay. She could be 
obstinate on^occasions, and I was in despair. 
But by some fortunate chance, a convent at 
Hampstead was heard of where the weekly 

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Our House 

charge would just be covered by the father's 
allowance, and as Clementine could find no 
argument against it, she had to give in. 

I breathed freely again, but I was not to be 
let off so easily. It was simpler to get mixed 
up in Clementine's affairs than to escape from 
them. At the convent, the nuns had learned 
wisdom, and they demanded to be paid weekly 
in advance. I must have waited until Judg- 
ment Day if I had depended upon Clementine 
to be in advance with anything, and in self- 
defence I offered to pay the first month. But 
this settled, at once there was another ob- 
stacle to dispose of. A trousseau was required 
with the little Ernest, and he had no clothes 
except those on his back. I provided the 
trousseau. Then the little Ernest rebelled and 
refused to hear of school unless he was sup- 
plied with a top, a mechanical boat, a balloon, 
and I scarcely remember what besides. I sup- 
plied them. Clementine, on her side, began to 
look harassed and careworn, and I never ven- 
tured to ask what conditions he exacted of her, 
but it was a relief to everybody when, after 
much shopping and innumerable coaxings and 

1 68 



Clementine 

bribes and scenes, at last she got her little 
Ernest off her hands. 

But if he was off hers, she was more than 
ever on mine. He gave her a perpetual subject 
of conversation. There were days when I 
seemed to hear her prattHng in the kitchen 
from the moment she came until the moment 
she left, and to a good deal of her prattle I had 
to listen. She made it her duty to report his 
progress to me, and the trouble was that she 
could never get through without confiding far 
more about her own, in the past as in the pre- 
sent. She might begin innocently with the fit of 
his new clothes, but as likely as not she would 
end with revelations of unspeakable horror. At 
least I could not find fault with Clementine's 
confidences for their mildness or monotony. 
In her high, shrill, lisping treble, as if she were 
reciting a lesson, and with the air of a naughty 
girl trying to keep back her giggles, she would 
tell me the most appalling details of her life. 

I had not dreamed that out of Zola or Defoe 
a woman could go through such adventures, 
or that, if she could, it would be possible for 
her to emerge a harmless charwoman doing 

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Our House 

the commonplace work of a household which 
I flatter myself is respectable, for a few shil- 
lings a week. Of poverty, of evil, of shame, 
of disgrace, there was nothing she had not 
known; and yet as I saw her busy and happy 
over her scrubbing and washing and polishing 
in our chambers, I could have believed she had 
never done anything less guileless in all her 
thirty years. She had a curiously impersonal 
way of relating these adventures, as if they 
were no concern of hers whatever. The most 
dramatic situations seemed to have touched 
her as little as the every-day events in her 
sordid struggle for bread, though she was not 
without some pride in the variety of her expe- 
rience. When Augustine warned her that her 
idleness was preparing for her a bed on the Em- 
bankment and daily food in a soup-kitchen, 
^'Eh bien? why not .^" she giggled; "I have 
been on the streets, I have been in prison, I 
have been in the workhouse, I have seen every- 
thing — fai tout vu, moil Why not that too?" 
With her, there was no shrinking from the 
workhouse, as with the respectable poor, "C^ 
n''est pas fait pour les chiens^^ she reasoned, 

170 



Clementine 

and looked upon it as an asylum held in re- 
serve. 

Her boast that she had seen everything was 
no exaggeration, her everything meaning the 
hideous side of life which those who see only 
the other try so hard to shut their eyes to. 
"What would you have?" she asked me more 
than once, "I was a bastard and a foundling"; 
as if with such a beginning, it would have been 
an inconsistency on her part to turn out any 
better than she was. That she had started life 
as a little lost package of humanity, left at the 
door of a house for les enfants trouves not far 
from Boulogne, never caused her shame and re- 
gret. From a visit paid by her mother to the 
Institution during her infancy, there could re- 
main no doubt of her illegitimacy, but it was a 
source of pleasure to her, and also of much 
agreeable speculation. 

"How can I be sure," she said to me, "that, 
though my mother was a cook, my father 
might not have been a ^r^/^^, or even a prince?" 

For practical purposes she knew no parents 
save the peasants who brought her up. The 
State in France, thrifty as the people, makes 

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Our House 

the children abandoned to it a source of profit 
to the hard-working poor. Clementine was put 
out to nurse. The one spark of genuine affec- 
tion she ever showed was for the woman to 
whose care she fell, and of whom she always 
spoke as ma mere, with a tenderness very differ- 
ent from her giggling adoration of the little 
Ernest. Incessant labour was the rule in ma 
mere^s house, and food was not too abundant, 
but of what there was Clementine had her 
share, though I fancy the scarcity then was the 
origin of the terrible hunger that consumed 
her throughout her life. About this hunger 
her story revolved, so that, while she talked of 
the past, I could seldom get far away from it. 
She recalled little else of the places the Institu- 
tion found for her as servant. The State in 
France is as wise as it is thrifty, and does not 
demoralize its foundlings by free gifts, but, 
when the time comes, makes them work, ap- 
propriating their wages until it has been paid 
back the money they have cost it. 

Clementine went into service young. She 
also went into it hungry, and life became a 
never-ending struggle for food. In one place 

172 



Clementine 

she was reduced to such straits that she de- 
voured a dish of poisoned meat prepared for 
the stray cats of the neighbourhood, and, 
though it brought her almost to death's door, 
she could still recall it as a feast. In another, 
a small country grocery store, she would steal 
down in the night, trembling with fear, to hunt 
for bits of candy and crackers, and, safe in bed 
again, would have to fight for them with the 
rats that shared her garret. And her tale of 
this period grew more miserable and squalid 
with every new stage, until she reached the 
dreadful climax when, still a child herself, she 
brought a little girl into the world to share her 
hunger. She had the courage to laugh when 
she told me of her wandering, half-starved, 
back to la bonne mere, who took her in when 
her time came, and kept the baby. She could 
laugh, too, when she recalled the wrath of M, 
le Directeur at the Institution, who sent for her, 
and scolded her, giving her a few sharp raps 
with his cane. 

If to Clementine her tragedy was a laughing 
matter, it was not for me to weep over it. But 
I was glad when she got through with this 

173 



Our House 

period and came to the next, which had in it 
more of pure comedy than enHvened most of 
her confidences. For once she was of age, and 
her debt to the Institution settled in full, she 
was free not only to work for herself, but to 
claim a percentage of the money she had been 
making during the long years of apprentice- 
ship; and this percentage amounting to five 
hundred francs, and Clementine never having 
seen so much money before, her imagination 
was stirred by the vastness of her wealth, and 
she insisted on being paid in five-franc pieces. 
She had to get a basket to hold them all, and 
with it on her arm she started off in search 
of adventure. This, I think, was the supreme 
moment in her life. 

Her adventures began in the third-class car- 
riage of a train for Boulogne, which might 
seem a mild beginning to most people, but 
was full of excitement for Clementine. She 
dipped her hands into the silver, and jingled 
it, and displayed it to everybody, with the van- 
ity of a child showing off its new frock. The 
only wonder was that any of the five-franc 
pieces were still in the basket when she got to 

174 



Clementine 

Boulogne. There they drew to her a group of 
young men and women who were bound for 
England to make their fortunes, and who per- 
suaded her to join them. Her head was not 
completely turned by her wealth, for she crossed 
with them on the bateau aux lapins, which she 
explained as the cheapest boat upon which 
anything but beasts and vegetables 'could find 
passage. At Folkestone, where they landed, she 
had no difficulty in getting a place as scullery 
maid. But washing up was as dull in England 
as in France, a poor resource for anybody 
with a basketful of five -franc pieces. One 
of the young men who had crossed with her 
agreed that it was a waste of time to work 
when there was money to spend, and they 
decided for a life of leisure together. The 
question of marriage apparently did not en- 
ter into the arrangement. They were con- 
tent to remain des unis, in M. Rod's phrase, 
and their union was celebrated by a few weeks 
of riotous living. The chicken their own 
Henry IV wished for all his subjects filled 
the daily pot, beer flowed like water, they 
could have paid for cake had bread failed; for 

175 



Our House 

the first time in her life Clementine forgot 
what it was to be hungry. 

It was delightful while it lasted, and I do not 
believe that she ever regretted having had her 
fling when the chance came. But the basket 
grew lighter and lighter, and all too soon barely 
enough five-franc pieces were left in it to carry 
them up to London. There, naturally, they 
found their way to the Quartier. The man 
picked up an odd job or two, Clementine 
scrubbed, washed, waited, did any and every- 
thing by which a few pence could be earned. 
The pot was now empty, beer ceased to flow, 
bread sometimes was beyond their means, and 
she was hungrier than ever. In the course of 
the year her little Ernest was added to the 
family, and there was no bonne mere in London 
to relieve her of the new burden. For a while 
Clementine could not work; when she could, 
there was no work to be had. Nor could the 
man get any more jobs, though I fancy his hunt 
for them was not too strenuous. Life became 
a stern, bread-hunting sort of business, and I 
think at moments Clementine almost wished 
herself back in the garret with the rats, or in 

176 



Clementine 

the garden where dishes of poisoned meat were 
sometimes to be stolen. The landlord threat- 
ened, starvation stared them in the face. Hun- 
ger is ever the incentive to enterprise, and 
Ernest's father turned Clementine on the 
streets. 

I must do her the justice to say that, of all 
her adventures, this was the one least to her 
liking. That she had fallen so low did not 
shock her; she looked upon it as part of the 
inevitable scheme of things: but left to her- 
self, she would have preferred another mode of 
earning her living. After I had been told of 
this period of horrors, I could never hear Cle- 
mentine's high, shrill treble and giggle without 
a shudder, for they were then part of her stock- 
in-trade, and she went on the streets in short 
skirts with her hair down her back. For 
months she wallowed in the gutter, at the 
mercy of the lowest and the most degraded, 
insulted, robbed, despised, and if she attempted 
to rebel, bullied back to her shameful trade by 
a man who had no thought save for the few 
pitiful pence she could bring to him out of it. 
The only part of the affair that pleased her 

177 



Our House 

was the ending — in prison after a disgraceful 
street brawl. She was really at heart an adven- 
turess, and the opportunity to see for the first 
time the inside of the panier a salade^ as she 
called the prison van, was welcomed by her in 
the light of a new and exciting adventure. 
Then, in prison itself, the dress with the arrows 
could be adjusted becomingly, warders and 
fellow prisoners could be made to laugh by her 
antics, and if she could have wished for more 
to eat, it was a great thing not to have to find 
the means to pay for what she got. 

She was hardly out of prison when Ernest's 
father chanced upon a woman who could pro- 
vide for him more liberally, and Clementine 
was again a free agent. The streets knew her 
no more, though for an interval the workhouse 
did. This was the crisis when, with the shrewd- 
ness acquired in the London slums, she learned 
something of the English law to her own ad- 
vantage, and through the courts compelled the 
father to contribute to the support of his son. 
The weekly three shillings and sixpence paid 
for a room. For food she had to work. With 
prison behind her, she was afraid to ask for a 

178 



Clementine 

place in respectable houses, and I should not 
care to record the sinks of iniquity and squalid 
dens where her shrill treble and little girl's 
giggle were heard. Ernest was dumped down 
of a morning upon any friendly neighbour who 
would keep an eye on him, until, somehow or 
other, la vieille grandmere appeared upon the 
scene and Clementine once more had two to 
feed and the daily problem of her own hunger 
to face. 

Her responsibilities never drove her to work 
harder than was absolutely necessary. " We 
must all toil or steal," Carlyle says. But 
Clementine knew better. She could have sug- 
gested a third alternative, for she had reduced 
begging to a fine art. Her scent was as keen 
for charitable associations as a pig's for truf- 
fles, and she could tell to a minute the appointed 
time of their alms-giving, and to a penny the 
value of their alms. She would, no matter when, 
drop regular work at the risk of losing it, to 
rush off after a possible charity. There was a 
Societe — I never knew it by any other name 
— that, while she was with me, drew her from 
my kitchen floor or my luncheon dishes as 

179 



Our House 

surely as Thursday came round, and the clock 
struck one. Why it existed she never made 
quite clear to me, — I doubt if she had an idea 
why, herself. It was enough for her that the 
poor French in London were under its special 
charge, and that, when luck was with her, she 
might come away with a loaf of bread, or an 
order for coals, or, if she played the beggar 
well, as much as a shilling. 

She kept up a brisk correspondence with 
^^ Madame la Baronne de Rothschild,^'' whose 
sole mission in life she apparently believed was 
to see her out of her difficulties. La BaronnCy 
on one occasion, gave her a sovereign. Heaven 
knows why, unless as a desperate measure to 
close the correspondence; but a good part of it 
went in postage for letters representing why the 
bestowal of sovereigns upon Clementine should 
become habitual. Stray agents, presumably 
from la Baronne, would pay me mysterious 
visits, to ask if Clementine were a deserving 
object of benevolence, and I was exposed to 
repeated cross-examination in her regard. She 
made a point of learning the hours when the 
chefs left the kitchens of the big hotels and res- 

i8o 



Clementine 

taurants near the Quartier, and also of finding 
out who among them might be looked to for 
a few odd pence for the sake of Ernest's father, 
at one time a washer of dishes, or who, after a 
coup de vin or an absinthe, grew generous with 
their money. She had gauged the depth of every 
tender heart in the Quartier and the possibiHty 
of scraps and broken meats at every shop and 
eating-place. And no one understood better 
how to beg, how to turn on the limelight and 
bring out in melodramatic relief the enormity of 
her need and destitution. The lisping treble, 
the giggle, the tattered clothes, la vieille grand- 
mere, the desertion of the little Ernest's father, 
the little Ernest himself, were so many valu- 
able assets. Indeed, she appreciated the value 
of the little Ernest so well that once she would 
have had me multiply him by twelve when she 
asked me to vouch for her poverty before some 
new society disposed to be friendly. If luck 
went against her, and nothing came of her beg- 
ging, she was not discouraged. Begging was 
a game of chance with her, — her Monte Carlo 
or Little Horses, — and she never murmured 
over her failures, but with her faculty for mak- 

i8i 



Our House 

ing the best of all things, she got amusement 
out of them as well as out of her successes. 

In the face of these facts, I cannot deny that 
Clementine's "character" was not exactly the 
sort most people expect when they engage a ser- 
vant. But I would not turn adrift a mangy 
dog or a lost cat whom I had once taken in. 
And she did her work very well, with a thor- 
oughness the English charwoman would have 
despised, never minding what that work was, 
so long as she had plenty to eat and could pre- 
pare by an elaborate toilet for every errand 
she ran. Her morals could do us small harm, 
and for a while I was foolish enough to hope 
ours might do her some good. I realize now 
that nothing could have Improved Clementine; 
she was not made that way; but at the time she 
was too wholly unlike any woman I had ever 
come in contact with, for me to see that the 
difference lay in her having no morals to help. 
She was not Immoral, but unmoral. Right and 
wrong were without meaning for her. Her 
standards. If she could be said to have any, 
were comfort and discomfort. Virtue and vice 
were the same to her, so long as she was not 

182 



Clementine 

unpleasantly interfered with. This was the 
explanation of her past, as of her frankness in 
disclosing it, and she was too much occupied 
in avoiding present pain to bother about the 
future by cultivating economy, or ambition, 
or prudence. An animal would take more 
thought for the morrow than Clementine. Of 
all the people I have ever come across, she had 
the most reason to be weary-laden, but instead 
of "tears in her eyes," there was always a gig- 
gle on her lips. "La colere^ c^est la folic ^''^ she 
assured me, and it was a folly she avoided with 
marked success. Perhaps she was wise, un- 
doubtedly she was the happier for it. 

Unfortunately for me, I had not her callous- 
ness or philosophy, — I am not yet quite sure 
which it was, — and if she would not think for 
herself, I was the more disturbed by the neces- 
sity of thinking for her. It was an absurd posi- 
tion. There I was, positively growing grey in 
my endeavours to drag her up out of the abyss 
of poverty into which she had sunk, and there 
she was, cheerful and happy, if she could only 
continue to enjoy la bonne cuisine de Madame, 
I never knew her to make the slightest at- 

183 



Our House 

tempt to profit by what I, or anyone else, 
would do for her. I remember, when Madame 
la Baronne sent her the sovereign, she stayed 
at home a week, and then wrote to me as 
her excuse, 'Tcii ete rentier e toute la semaine. 
Maintenantje n^ai plus un penny ^ ilfaut m^oc- 
cuper du travailJ^ I had not taken her things 
out of pawn before they were pawned again, 
and the cast-off clothes she begged from me 
followed as promptly. Her little Ernest, after 
all my trouble, stayed at the convent six weeks, 
— the month I paid for and two weeks that 
Clementine somehow wheedled out of the sis- 
ters, — and then he was back as of old, picking 
up his education in the London streets. I pre- 
sented her once with a good bed I had no more 
use for, and, to make space for It, she went 
into debt and moved from her one room near 
Tottenham Court Road to two rooms and a 
higher rent near the Lower Marsh, and was 
robbed on the way by the man she hired to 
move her. When she broke anything, and she 
frequently did, she was never perturbed: '' Ma- 
dame est forte pour payer ^^ or ''''V argent est 
fait pour router,''^ was her usual answer to my 

184 



Clementine 

reproaches. To try to show her the road to 
economy was to plunge her into fresh extrava- 
gance. 

Nor did I advance matters by talking to her 
seriously. I recall one special effort to impress 
upon her the great misery she was preparing 
for herself by her shiftlessness. I had given her 
a pair of shoes, though I had vowed a hundred 
times to give her nothing more, and I used the 
occasion for a lecture. She seemed eager to 
interrupt once or twice, and I flattered myself 
my words were having their effect. And now 
what had she to say.^ I asked when my elo- 
quence was exhausted. She giggled: *' Would 
Madame look at her feet in Madame^ s shoes? 
Jamais je ne me suis vue si bien chaussee^^ 
and she was going straight to the Quartier "pour 
eblouir le monde^''^ she said. When Augustine 
took her in hand, though Augustine's eloquence 
had a vigour mine could not boast of, the re- 
sult was, if anything, more discouraging. Cle- 
mentine, made bold by custom, would turn a 
hand-spring or dance a jig, or go through the 
other accomplishments she had picked up in 
the slums. 

185 



Our House 

If I could discover any weak spot by which 
I could reach her, I used to think something 
might be gained, and I lost much time in study- 
ing how to work upon her emotions. But her 
emotions were as far to seek as her morals. 
Even family ties, usually so strong in France, 
had no hold upon her. If she adored her little 
Ernest, it was because he brought her in three 
shillings and sixpence a week. There was no 
adoration for her little girl who occasionally 
wrote from the Pas-de-Calais and asked her 
for money. I saw one of the child's letters in 
which she implored Clementine to pay for a 
white veil and white shoes; she was going to 
make her first communion, and the good 
adopted mother could pay for no more than 
the gown. The First Communion is the great- 
est event in the French child's life; there could 
be no deeper disgrace than not to be dressed 
for it, and the appeal must have moved every 
mother who read it, except Clementine. To 
her it was comic, and she disposed of it with 
giggles: "CVj^ drole quand meme^ d^ avoir une 
fille de cet age^"* and funnier that she could be 
expected to pay for anything for anybody. 

i86 



Clementine 

But if her family awoke in her no sentiment, 
her "home "did, though it was of the kind that 
Lamb would have classed with the "no homes." 
The tenacity with which she clung to it was her 
nearest approach to strong feeling. I suppose it 
was because she had so long climbed the stairs 
of others that she took such complete satisfac- 
tion in the two shabby little rooms to which 
she gave the name. I had a glimpse of them, 
never to be forgotten, once when she failed to 
come for two days, and I went to look her up. 
The street reeked with the smell of fried fish 
and onions ; it was filled with barrows of kip- 
pers and haddocks and whelks; it was lined 
with old-clothes shops; it was crowded with 
frowzy women and horribly dirty children. 
And the halls and stairs of the tenement where 
she lived were black with London smoke and 
greasy with London dirt. I did not feel clean 
afterwards until I had had a bath, and it was 
never again as easy to reconcile myself to Cle- 
mentine's daily reappearance in our midst. But 
to her the rooms were home, and for that rea- 
son she would have stayed on in a grimier and 
more malodorous neighbourhood, if such a 

187 



Our House 

thing could be, in preference to living in the 
cleanest and freshest London workhouse at 
the rate -payers' expense. Her objection to 
going into service except as a charwoman was 
that she would have to stay the night. ^'Je ne 
serais pas chez moi^\' and much as she prized 
her comfort, it was not worth the sacrifice. On 
the contrary, she was prepared to sacrifice her 
comfort, dear as it was to her, that she might 
retain her home. She actually went to the 
length of taking in as companion an Italian 
workman she met by accident, not because he 
offered to marry her, which he did not, but 
because, according to his representations, he 
was making twenty-five shillings a week and 
would help to pay the rent. "/^ serais chez 
mo^V'was now her argument, and for food she 
could continue to work or beg. He would be a 
convenience, voila tout. The Italian stayed a 
week. He lounged in bed all morning while 
she was at work, he smoked all afternoon. At 
the end of the week Clementine sent him fly- 
ing. ''Je suis hete et je mourrais Kte^^ was 
her explanation to me; but she was not hete to 
the point of adding an idle fourth to her bur- 

i88 



Clementine 

den, and, as a result, being turned out of the 
home she had taken him in to preserve. 

Clementine had been with us more than two 
years when the incident of the Italian oc- 
curred, and by this time I had become so accus- 
tomed to her and to her adventures that I was 
not as shocked as perhaps I should have been. 
It was not a way out of difficulties I could ap- 
prove, but Clementine was not to be judged by 
my standards, and I saw no reason to express 
my disapproval by getting rid of her just when 
she most needed to stay. In her continually 
increasing need to stay, I endured so much 
besides that, at the end of her third year in our 
chambers, I was convinced that she would go 
on doing] my rough work as long as I had 
rough work to be done. More than once I came 
to the end of my patience and dismissed 
her. But it was no use. In the course of a cou- 
ple of weeks, or at the most three, she was 
back scrubbing my floors and polishing my 
brasses. 

The first time she lost her place with me, I 
sympathized to such an extent that I was at 
some pains to arrange a scheme to send her to 

189 



Our House 

France. But Clementine, clinging to the plea- 
sures of life in the Lower Marsh, agreed to 
everything I proposed, and was careful to put 
every hindrance in the way of carrying out my 
plans. Twice I went to the length of engaging 
another woman, but either the other woman 
did not suit or else she did not stay, and I had 
to ask Clementine to return. On her side, she 
made various efforts to leave me, bored, I 
fancy, by the monotony of regular work, but 
they were as unsuccessful as mine to turn her 
off. After one disappearance of three weeks, 
she owned up frankly to having been again 
chez les femmes whose pay was better; after a 
second, she said she had been ill In the work- 
house which I doubted; after all, she was as 
frank in admitting that nowhere else did she 
enjoy la bonne cuisine de Madame, and that 
this was the attraction to which I was indebted 
for her fidelity. 

It may have been kindness, it may have 
been weakness, it may have been simply neces- 
sity, that made me so lenient on these occa- 
sions; I do not attempt to decide. But I cannot 
blame Clementine for thinking it was because 

190 



Clementine 

she was indispensable. I noticed that gradu- 
ally In small ways she began to take advantage 
of our good-nature. For one thing there was 
now no limit to her conversation. I did not 
spend my time In the kitchen and could turn 
a deaf ear to It, but I sometimes wondered if 
Augustine would not be the next to disappear. 
She would also often relieve the tedium of her 
several tasks by turning the handsprings In 
which she was so accomplished, or dancing the 
jig popular In the Lower Marsh, or by other 
performances equally reprehensible In the 
kitchen of une maison bourgeoise, as she was 
pleased to describe our chambers. She never 
lost a chance of rushing to the door If trades- 
people rang, or talking with the British Work- 
men we were obliged, for our sins, to employ. 
Their bewilderment, stolid Britons as they 
were, would have been funny, had not her 
manner of exciting it been so discreditable. 
She was even caught — I was spared the know- 
ledge until much later — turning her hand- 
springs for a select company of plasterers and 
painters. Then I could see that she accepted 
anything we might bestow upon her as her due, 

191 



Our House 

and was becoming critical of the value and 
quality of the gift. I can never forget on one 
occasion when J. was going away, and he gave 
her a few shillings, the expression with which 
she looked first at the money and then at him 
as though insulted by the paltriness of the 
amount. More unbearable was the unfair use 
she made of her little Ernest. 

La vieille grandmere, who had wandered by 
chance into her life, wandered out of it as casu- 
ally, or so Clementine said as an argument to 
induce me to receive that odious little boy into 
my kitchen during her hours of work; she had 
nobody to take care of him, she could not leave 
him alone. Here, happily for myself, I had the 
strength to draw the line. But when this argu- 
ment failed, she found another far more har- 
rowing. She took the opportunity of my stum- 
bling across her inour Httle hall one day at noon 
to tell me that, as I would not let her bring 
him with her, she left him every day, carefully 
locked up out of harm's way, alone in her 
rooms. A child of seven, as he was then, 
locked up to get into any mischief he could 
invent, and, moreover, a child with a talent 

192 



Clementine 

for mischief! that was too much, and I sent her 
flying home without giving her time to eat 
her lunch or Hnger before the glass, and I 
was haunted for the rest of the day with the 
thought of all the terrible things that might 
have happened to him. Naturally nothing did 
happen, nothing ever does happen to children 
like the little Ernest, and Clementine, dis- 
mayed by the loss of her lunch and the inter- 
ference with her toilet, never ventured upon 
this argument a second time. But she found 
another almost as bad, for she informed me 
that, thanks to my interference, she was com- 
pelled to leave him again to run the streets as 
he would, and she hinted only too plainly that 
for whatever evil might befall him, I was re- 
sponsible. Our relations were at this pleasant 
stage, and her little Ernest was fast developing 
into a monstrous Frankenstein wholly of my 
own raising, when one day she arrived with a 
new air of Importance and announced her ap- 
proaching marriage. 

I was enchanted. I had not permitted my- 
self to feel the full weight of the burden Cle- 
mentine was heaping upon my shoulders until 

193 



Our House 

now It seemed on the point of slipping from 
them, and never were congratulations more 
sincere than mine. As she spared me none of 
her confidence, every detail of her courtship 
and her prospects was soon at my disposal. In 
the course of her regular round of the kitchen 
doors of the Quartier she had picked up an 
EngHshman who washed dishes in a restaurant. 
He was not much over twenty, he earned no 
less than eighteen shillings a week, and he had 
asked her to marry him. She accepted him, as 
she had accepted the Italian, because he would 
pay the rent; the only difference was that her 
new admirer proposed the form of companion- 
ship which is not lightly broken. "Cette fois 
je crois que cela sera vrai — que V affaire ne 
tombera pas dans Veau^'' she said, remember- 
ing the deep waters which, in her recent affair, 
had gone over her head. "Mon petit Anglais^^ 
— her name for him — figured in her account 
as a model of propriety. He had a strict regard 
for morals. He objected to her working chez 
les femmes, and expressed his desire that she 
should remain in our service, despite the loss 
to their income. He condoned her previous in- 

194 



Clementine 

discretions, and was prepared to play a father's 
part to her Httle Ernest. 

Altogether the situation was fast growing 
idyllic, and with Clementine in her new role of 
fiancee^ we thought that peace for us all was in 
sight. She set about her preparations at once, 
and did not hesitate to let me know that an 
agreeable wedding present would be house 
linen, however old and ragged, and a new hat 
for the wedding. I had looked for some pre- 
liminary begging as a matter of course, and I 
was already going through my linen closet to 
see what I could spare, when I caught Clemen- 
tine collecting wedding presents from me for 
which I had not been asked. 

Until then I believed that, whatever crimes 
and vices might be laid at her door, dishonesty 
was not to be counted among them. I even 
boasted of her honesty as an excuse for my 
keeping her, nuisance as she was. I think I 
should have doubted her guilt if the report of 
it only had reached me. But I could not doubt 
the testimony of my own eyes when there was 
discovered, carefully packed in the capacious 
bag she always carried, one of my best napkins, 

195 



Our House 

a brand-new tea-cloth, and a few kitchen 
knives and forks that could not have strayed 
there of themselves. I could see in the articles 
selected her tender concern for the comfort of 
her petit Anglais and her practical wish to pre- 
pare her establishment for his coming, and 
probably it showed her consideration for me 
that she had been content with such simple 
preparations. But the value of the things 
themselves and her object in appropriating 
them had nothing to do with the main fact 
that, after all we had done and endured, she 
was stealings from us. "We should wipe two 
words from our vocabulary : gratitude and 
charity," Stevenson once wrote. Clementine 
wiped out the one so successfully that she 
left me with no use for the other. I told her 
she must go, and this time I was in good ear- 
nest. 

To Clementine, however, nothing could have 
seemed less possible. She could not under- 
stand that a petty theft would make her less 
indispensable, or that I would strain at a gnat 
after swallowing so many camels. Within a 
week she was knocking at our door and express- 

196 



Clementine 

ing her willingness to resume her place in our 
chambers. She was not discouraged by the 
refusal to admit her, but a few days later, this 
time by letter, she again assured me that she 
waited to be recalled, and she referred to the 
desire of her 'petit Anglais in the matter. She 
affected penitence, admitting that she had 
committed une '^Betisse^^ — the spelling is hers 
— and adding: ^' avoir dgit ainsi avec des 
maitres aussi hons, ce ifCest pas pardonable. Je 
vous assure que si un jour je devien riche, ou 
pent etre plus pauvre, que dans ma richesse, 
comme dans ma plus grande misere,jene pour- 
rais jamais ouhlier les bons maitres Monsieur 
et Madame, car jamais dans ma vie d^orphe- 
line, je n^aie jamais rencontre d^aussi bons 
maitres, '^^ She also reminded me that she lived 
in the hope that Madame would not forget the 
promised present of linen and a hat. I made 
no answer. Another letter followed, penitence 
now exchanged for reproaches. She expostu- 
lated with me for taking the bread out of the 
mouth of her petit innocent — Ernest — the 
little innocent whom the slums had nothing 
more to teach. This second letter met the same 

197 



Our House 

fate as the first, but her resources were not 
exhausted. In a third she tried the dignity of 
sorrow: ''Ma faute m'^a rendu Vdme si triste^^^ 
and, as this had no effect, she used in a fourth 
the one genuine argument of them all, her hun- 
ger: ''Enfin il faut que je tdche d^oublier, mats 
en attendant je rn^en mordrais peut etre les 
poings plus d^unefois.^^ I was unmoved. I 
had spent too much emotion already upon 
Clementine; also a neat little French girl had 
replaced her. 

She gave up when she found me proof against 
an argument that had hitherto always dis- 
armed me. This was the last time she put her- 
self at my service; though once afterwards she 
gave me the pleasure of hearing from her. Not 
many weeks had passed when I received a pic- 
torial post-card that almost reconciled me to 
a fashion I deplore. The picture that adorned 
it was a photograph of an ordinary three- 
storey London house, the windows draped with 
lace curtains of a quality and design not com- 
mon in the Lower Marsh. But the extraordi- 
nary thing about it was that in the open door- 
way — apronless, her arms akimbo, the wave 

198 



Clementine 

of hair low on her forehead — stood Clemen- 
tine, giggling in triumph. A few words accom- 
panied this astonishing vision. "Je n^oublie- 
rais jamais la bonne maison de Madame ^'^^ and 
the kind message was signed "Mrs. Johnson." 
Whether the eighteen shillings of her petit 
Anglais ran to so imposing a home, or to what 
she owed the post-card prominence usually 
reserved for the monuments of London, she 
did not condescend to explain. Probably she 
only wanted to show that, though she had 
achieved this distinction, she could be mag- 
nanimous enough to forget the past and think 
of us kindly. 

That was the last I ever heard from Cle- 
mentine, the last I hope I ever shall hear. The 
pictorial post-card told me the one thing I 
cared to know. She did not leave me for a bed 
on the Embankment by night and a round of 
the soup-kitchens by day. If ever she does see 
life in this way and so completes her experience, 
the responsibility will not be mine for having 
driven her to it. 



VI 

The Old Housekeeper 



VI 

THE OLD HOUSEKEEPER 

No housekeeper could have been more in 
place than the little old white-haired woman 
who answered our ring the day we came to 
engage our windows, and, incidentally, the 
chambers behind them. She was venerable in 
appearance and scrupulously neat in her dress, 
and her manner had just the right touch of 
dignity and deference, until we explained our 
errand. Then she flew into a rage and told us 
in a tone that challenged us to dispute it, 
"You know, no coal is to be carried upstairs 
after ten o'clock in the morning." 

Coal was as yet so remote that we would 
have agreed to anything in our impatience to 
look out of the windows, and, reassured by us, 
she became the obsequious housekeeper again, 
getting the keys, toiling with us up the three 
flights of stairs, unlocking the double door, — 
for, as I have said, there is an "oak" to 

203 



Our House 

"sport," — ushering us into the chambers with 
the Adam mantelpieces and decorations and 
the windows that brought us there, dropping 
the correct "Sir" and "Madam" into her 
talk, accepting without a tremor the shilling 
we were ashamed to offer, and realizing so 
entirely our idea of what a housekeeper in Lon- 
don chambers ought to be, that her outbreak 
over the coal we had not ordered, and might 
never order, was the more perplexing. 

I understood it before we were settled in 
our chambers, for they were not really ours 
until after a long delay over the legal formali- 
ties with which the English love to entangle 
their simplest transactions at somebody else's 
expense, and a longer one in proving our per- 
sonal and financial qualifications, the landlord 
being disturbed by a suspicion that, like the 
Housekeeper's daughter, we were in the pro- 
fession and spent most of our time "resting," a 
suspicion confirmed by the escape of the last 
tenant, also in the profession, with a year's 
rent still to pay. And then came much the 
longest delay of all over the British Workman, 
who, once he got in, threatened never to get out. 
204 



The Old Housekeeper 

In the mean while we saw the Housekeeper 
almost every day. 

We did not have to see her often to discover 
that she was born a housekeeper, that she had 
but one thought in life, and that this was the 
house under her charge. I am sure she be- 
lieved that she came into the world to take 
care of it, unless indeed it was built to be taken 
care of by her. She belonged to a generation 
in England who had not yet been taught the 
folly of interest in their work, and she was old- 
fashioned enough to feel the importance of the 
post she filled. She would have lost her self- 
respect had she failed in the slightest detail of 
her duty to the house. From the first, the spot- 
less marvel she made of it divided our admira- 
tion with our windows. The hall and front 
steps were immaculate, the white stone stairs 
shone, there was not a speck of dust anywhere, 
and I appreciated the work this meant in an 
old London building, where the dirt not only 
filters through doors and windows, but oozes 
out of the walls and comes up through the 
floors. She did not pretend to hide her despair 
when our painters and paperers tramped and 
205 



Our House 

blundered in and out; she fretted herself ill 
when our furniture was brought up the three 
flights of her shining stairs. Painters and 
paperers and the bringing up of furniture were 
rare incidents in the life of a tenant and had 
to be endured. But coal, with its trail of dust, 
was an endless necessity, and at least could be 
regulated. This was why, after her daily clean- 
ing was done, she refused to let it pass. 

Once we were established, we saw her less 
often. Her daily masterpiece was finished in 
the morning before we were up, and at all 
times she effaced herself with the respect she 
owed to tenants of a house in which she was 
the servant. If we did meet her she acknow- 
ledged our greeting with ostentatious humility, 
for she clung with as little shame to servility 
as to cleanliness; servility was also a part of 
the business of a housekeeper, just as elegance 
was the mark of the profession which her 
daughter graced, and the shame would have 
been not to be as servile as the position de- 
manded. 

This daughter was in every way an elegant 
person, dressing with a fidelity to fashion which 

206 



The Old Housekeeper 

I could not hope to emulate, and with the help 
of a fashionable dressmaker whom I could not 
afford to pay. She was " resting " from the time 
we came into the house until her mother left it, 
but if in the profession it is a misfortune to be 
out of work, it is a crime to look it, and her 
appearance and manner gave no hint of unem- 
ployment. In an emergency she would bring 
us up a message or a letter, but her civility had 
none of her mother's obsequiousness; it was 
a condescension, and she made us feel the 
honor she conferred upon the house by living 
in it. She was engaged to be married to a 
stage manager who for the moment seemed to 
be without a stage to manage, for he spent his 
evenings with her in the Housekeeper's little 
sitting-room, where photographs of actors and 
actresses, each with its sprawling autograph, 
covered the walls, crowded the mantelpiece, 
and littered the table. I think the House- 
keeper could have asked for nothing better 
than that they should both continue to " rest," 
not so much because it gave her the pleasure 
of their society as because it was a protection 
to the house to have a man about after dark 

207 



Our House 

until the street door was closed at eleven. 
Had It come to a question between the house 
and her daughter, the daughter would not 
have had a chance. 

The Housekeeper, for all her deference to 
the tenants, was a despot, and none of us 
dared to rebel against her rule and disturb the 
order she maintained. To anybody coming in 
from the not too respectable little street the 
respectability of the house was overwhelming, 
and I often noticed that strangers, on entering, 
lowered their voices and stepped more softly. 
The hush of repose hung heavy on the public 
hall and stairs, whatever might be going on 
behind the two doors that faced each other 
on every landing. We all emulated her in 
the quiet and decorum of our movements. 
We allowed ourselves so seldom to be seen 
that after three months I still knew little of 
the others except their names on their doors, 
the professions of those who had offices and 
hung up their signs, and the frequency with 
which the Church League on the First Floor 
drank afternoon tea. On certain days, when 
I went out towards five o'clock, I had to push 
208 



The Old Housekeeper 

my way through a procession of bishops in 
aprons and gaiters, deans and ordinary par- 
sons who were legion, dowagers and duchesses 
who were as sands on the stairs. I may be 
wrong, but I fancy that the Housekeeper 
would have found a way to rout this weekly 
invasion if, in the aprons and gaiters, she had 
not seen symbols of the respectability which 
was her pride. 

What I did not find out about the tenants 
for myself, there was no learning from her. 
She disdained the gossip which was the breath 
of life to the other housekeepers in the street, 
where, in the early mornings when the fronts 
were being done, or in the cool of summer 
evenings when the day's work was over, I 
would see them chattering at their doors. 
She never joined in the talk, holding herself 
aloof, as if her house were on a loftier plane 
than theirs, and as If the number of her years 
in it raised her to a higher caste. Exactly how 
many these years had been she never pre- 
sumed to say, but she looked as ancient as the 
house, and had she told me she remembered 
Bacon and Pepys, who were tenants each in 

209 



Our House 

his own day, or Peter the Great, who lived 
across the street, I should have believed her. 
She did not, however, claim to go further back 
than Etty, the Royal Academician, who spent 
over a quarter of a century in our chambers, 
and one of whose sitters she once bro^ught up 
to see us, — a melancholy old man who could 
only shake his head, first over the changes 
in the house since Etty painted those wonder- 
ful Victorian nudes, so demure that ''Bob" 
Stevenson insisted that Etty's maiden aunts 
must have sat for them, and then over the 
changes in the River, which also, it seemed, 
had seen better days. Really, he was so dis- 
mal a survivor of an older generation that we 
were glad she brought no more of his contem- 
poraries to see us. 

For so despotic a character, the House- 
keeper had a surprisingly feminine capacity 
for hysterics, of which she made the most the 
night of the fire. I admit it was an agitat- 
ing event for us all. The Fire of London was 
not so epoch-making. Afterwards the tenants 
used to speak of the days "Before the Fire," 
as we still talk at home of the days "Before 

210 



The Old Housekeeper 

the War." It happened in July, the third 
month of our tenancy. J. was away, and, 
owing to domestic complications, I was alone 
in our chambers at night. I do not recall the 
period with pride, for it proved me more of 
a coward than I cared to acknowledge. If I 
came home late, it was a struggle to make up 
my mind to open my front door and face the 
Unknown on the other side. Once or twice 
there was a second struggle at the dining-room 
door, the simple search for biscuits exaggerat- 
ing itself into a perilous adventure. As I was 
not yet accustomed to the noises in our 
chambers, fear followed me to my bedroom, 
and when the trains on the near railroad 
bridge awoke me, I lay trembling, certain they 
were burglars or ghosts, forgetting that visitors 
of that kind are usually shyer in announcing 
themselves. Then I began to be ashamed, and 
there was a night when, though the noises 
sounded strangely like voices immediately out- 
side my window, I managed to turn over and 
try to sleep again. This time the danger was 
real, and, the next thing I knew, somebody 
was ringing the front doorbell and knocking 

211 



Our House 

without stopping, and before I had time 
to be afraid I was out of bed and at the 
door. It was the young man from across the 
hall, who had come to give me the cheerful 
intelligence that his chambers were on fire, 
and to advise me to dress as fast as I knew 
how and get downstairs before the firemen 
and the hose arrived, or I might not get down 
at all. 

I flung myself into my clothes, although, as 
I am pleased to recall, I had the sense to select 
my most useful gown, in case but one was 
left me in the morning, and the curiosity to 
step for a second on to the leads where the 
flames were leaping from the young man's 
windows. As it was too late to help himself, 
he was waiting, with his servant, to help me. 
A pile of J.'s drawings lay on a chair in the 
hall, — I thrust them into the young man's 
outstretched arms. For some incomprehen- 
sible reason J.'s huge schube was on another 
chair, — I threw it into the arms of the young 
man's servant, who staggered under its unex- 
pected weight. I rushed to my desk to secure 
the money I was unwilling to leave behind, 

212 



The Old Housekeeper 

when a bull's-eye lantern flashed upon me 
and a policeman ordered me out. Firemen — 
for London firemen eventually arrive if the 
fire burns long enough — were dragging up a 
hose as I flew downstairs, and the policeman 
had scarcely pushed me into the House- 
keeper's room, the young man had just de- 
posited the drawings at my feet, and the ser- 
vant the schube, when the stairs became a 
raging torrent. 

I had not thought of the Housekeeper till 
then ; after that there was no thinking of any- 
thing else. My dread of never again seeing 
our chambers was nothing to her sense of 
the outrage to her house. Niobe weeping for 
her children was not so tragic a spectacle as 
she lamenting the ruin of plaster and paint 
that did not belong to her. She was half- 
dressed, propped up against cushions on a 
couch, snifiing the salts and sipping the water 
administered by her daughter, who had taken 
the time to dress carefully and elegantly for the 
scene. "Oh, what shall I do! Oh, what shall 
I do!" the Housekeeper walled as she saw me, 
wringing her hands with an abandonment that 

213 



Our House 

would have made her daughter's fortune on 
the stage. 

Her sitting-room had been appropriated as 
a refuge for the tenants, and this sudden re- 
union was my introduction to them. As the 
room was small, my first impression was of a 
crowd, though in actual numbers we were not 
many. The young man whose distinction was 
that the fire originated in his chambers, and 
myself, represented the Third Floor Front 
and Back. The Architect and his clerks of the 
Second Floor Front were at home in their 
beds, unconscious of the deluge pouring into 
their office; the Second Floor Back had gone 
away on a holiday. The Church League of the 
First Floor Front, haunted by bishops and 
deans, duchesses and dowagers, was of course 
closed, and we were deprived of whatever spir- 
itual consolation their presence might have 
provided. But the First Floor Back filled the 
little room with her loud voice and portly 
presence. She had attired herself for the 
occasion in a black skirt and a red jacket, 
that, for all her efforts, would not meet over 
the vast expanse of grey Jaeger vest beneath, 

214 



The Old Housekeeper 

and her thin wisps of grey hair were drawn 
up under a green felt hat of the pattern I wore 
for bicycling. I looked at it regretfully: a 
hat of any kind would have completed my 
costume. I complimented her on her fore- 
thought; but ''What could Tdo.^"' she said, 
*'they flurried me so I could n't find my false 
front anywhere, and I had to cover my head 
with something." It was extraordinary how 
a common danger broke down the barrier of 
reserve we had hitherto so carefully cultivated. 
She had her own salts which she shared with 
us all, when she did not need them for the 
Housekeeper, whom she kept calling "Poor 
dear!" and who, after every ''Poor dear!" 
went off into a new attack of hysterics. 

The Ground Floor Front, a thin, spry old 
gentleman, hovered about us, bobbing in and 
out like the little man in the weather-house. 
He was in the insurance business, I was im- 
mediately informed, and it seemed a comfort 
to us all to know it, though I cannot for the 
life of me imagine why it should have been 
to me, not one stick or stitch up there in our 
chambers being insured. The Ground Floor 

215 



Our House 

Back was at his club, and his v/ife and two 
children had not been disturbed, as in their 
chambers the risk was not immediate, and, 
anyway, they could easily walk out should it 
become so. He had been promptly sent for, 
and when a message came back that he was 
playing whist and would hurry to the rescue 
of his family as soon as his rubber was finished, 
the indignation in the Housekeeper's room was 
intense. "Brute!" the Housekeeper said, and 
after that, through the rest of the night, she 
would ask every few minutes if he had re- 
turned, and the answer in the negative was 
fresh fuel to her wrath. 

She was, if anything, more severe with the 
young man whose chambers were blazing, 
and who confessed he had gone out toward 
midnight leaving a burning candle in one of 
his rooms. He treated the fire as a jest, which 
she could not forgive; and when at dawn, he 
decided that all his possessions, including 
account-books committed to his care, were in 
ashes, and that it was useless to wait, and 
he wished us good-morning and good-by, she 
hinted darkly that fires might be one way 

216 



The Old Housekeeper 

of disposing of records it was convenient to 
be rid of. 

Indignation served better than salts to 
rouse the Housekeeper from her hysterics, and 
I was glad of the distraction it gave her for 
another reason : without it, she could not long 
have remained unconscious of an evil that 
I look back to as the deadliest of all during 
that night's vigil. For, gradually through her 
room, by this time close to suffocation, there 
crept the most terrible smell. It took hold 
of me, choked me, sickened me. The House- 
keeper's daughter and the First Floor Back 
blanched under it, the Housekeeper turned 
from white to green. I have often marvelled 
since that they never referred to it, but I 
know why I did not. For it was I who sent 
that smell downstairs when I threw the Rus- 
sian schube into the arms of the Third Floor 
Front's servant. Odours,they say, are the best 
jogs to memory, and the smell of the schube is 
for me so inextricably associated with the fire, 
that I can never think of one without remem- 
bering the other. 

The schube was the chief treasure among 
217 



Our House 

the fantastic costumes it is J.'s joy to collect 
on his travels. His Hungarian sheepskins, 
French hooded capes, Swiss blouses, Spanish 
berets, Scotch tarn - o' - shanters, Dalmatian 
caps, Roumanian embroidered shirts, and the 
rest, I can dispose of by packing them out of 
sight and dosing them with camphor. But no 
trunk was big enough to hold the Russian 
schube, and its abominable smell, even when 
reinforced by tons of camphor and pepper, 
could not frighten away the moths. It was 
picturesque, so much I admit in its favor, and 
Whistler's lithograph of J. draped in it is a 
princely reward for my trouble. But that 
trouble lasted for eighteen years, during which 
time J. wore the schuhe just twice, — once to 
pose for the lithograph and once on a winter 
night in London, when its weight was a far 
more serious discomfort than the cold. Occa- 
sionally he exhibited it to select audiences. 
At all other times it hung in a colossal linen 
bag made especially to hold it. The eighteenth 
summer, when the bag was opened for the 
periodical airing and brushing, no schube was 
there; not a shred of fur remained, the cloth 

218 



The Old Housekeeper 

was riddled with holes; it had fallen before its 
hereditary foe and the moths had devoured it. 
For this had I toiled over it; for this had I 
rescued it on the night of the fire as if it were 
my crowning jewel; for this had I braved the 
displeasure of the Housekeeper, from which 
indeed I escaped only because, at the critical 
moment, the policeman who had ordered me 
downstairs appeared to say that the lady from 
the Third Floor Back could go up again if she 
chose. 

The stairs were a waterfall under which I 
ascended. The two doors of our chambers were 
wide open, with huge gaps where panels had 
been, the young man's servant having care- 
fully shut them after me in our flight, thinking, 
I suppose, that the firemen would stand upon 
ceremony and ask for the key before venturing 
in. A river was drying up in our hall, and the 
strip of matting down the centre was sodden. 
Empty soda-water bottles rolled on the floor, 
though it speaks well for London firemen that 
nothing stronger was touched. Candles were 
stuck upside down in our hanging Dutch 
lamp and all available candlesticks, curtains 

219 



Our House 

and blinds were pulled about, chairs were up- 
set, the marks of muddy feet were everywhere. 
I ought to have been grateful, and I was, that 
the damage was so small, all the more when I 
went again on to the leads and saw the black- 
ened heap to which the night had reduced 
the young man's chambers. But the place 
was inexpressibly cheerless and dilapidated in 
the dawning light. 

It was too late to go to bed, too early to go 
to work. I was hungry, and the baker had not 
come, nor the charwoman. I was faint, the 
smell of the schuhe was strong in my nostrils, 
though the schuhe itself was now safely locked 
up in a remote cupboard. I wandered dis- 
consolately from room to room, when, of a 
sudden, there appeared at my still open front 
door a gorgeous vision, — a large and stately 
lady, fresh and neat, arrayed in flowing red 
draperies, with a white lace fichu thrown over 
a mass of luxuriant golden hair. I stared, 
speechless with amazement. It was not until 
she spoke that I recognized the First Floor 
Back, who had had time to lay her hands not 
only on a false front, but on a whole wig, and 

220 



The Old Housekeeper 

who had had the enterprise to make tea which 
she invited me to drink with her in Pepys's 
chambers. 

The Housekeeper and the Housekeeper's 
daughter were already in her dining-room, the 
Housekeeper huddled up in a big armchair, 
pillows at her back, a stool at her feet. Like 
her house she was a wreck, and her demoraliza- 
tion was sad to see. All her life, until a few 
short hours ago, she had been the model of 
neatness; now she did not care how she looked; 
her white hair was untidy, her dress half- 
buttoned, her apron forgotten; and she, who 
had hitherto discouraged familiarity in the 
tenants, joined us as a friend. She was too 
exhausted for hysterics, but she moaned over 
her tea and abandoned herself to her grief. 
She could not rally, and, what is more, she 
did not want to. She had no life apart from 
her house, and in its ruin she saw her own. 
Her immaculate hall was defaced and stained, 
a blackened groove was worn in her shining 
stairs, the water pouring through the cham- 
bers in the front, down to her own little 
apartment, had turned them all into a damp 

221 



Our House 

and depressing mess. Her moans were the 
ceaseless accompaniment to our talk of the 
night's disaster. Always she had waited for 
the fire, she said, she had dreaded it, and at 
last it had come, and there was no sorrow like 
unto hers. 

After the first excitement, after the house 
had resumed, as well as it could, its usual 
habits, the Housekeeper remained absorbed 
in her grief. Hitherto her particular habit 
was to work, and she had been able, unaided, 
to keep the house up to her immaculate 
standard of perfection. But now to restore 
it to order was the affair of builders, of plas- 
terers and painters and paperers. There was 
nothing for her to do save to sit with hands 
folded and watch the sacrilege. Her occupa- 
tion was gone, and all was wrong with her 
world. 

I was busy during the days immediately 
"after the fire." I had to insure our belongings, 
which, of course, being insured, have never 
run such a risk again. I had to prepare and 
pack for a journey to France, now many days 
overdue, and, what with one thing or another, 

222 



The Old Housekeeper 

I neglected the Housekeeper. When at last I 
was ready to shut up our chambers and start 
and I called at her rooms, it seemed to me she 
had visibly shrunk and wilted, though she 
had preserved enough of the proper spirit 
to pocket the substantial tip I handed over to 
her with my keys. She was no less equal to 
accepting a second when, after a couple of 
months I returned and could not resist this 
expression of my sympathy on finding the hall 
still stained and defaced, the stairs still with 
their blackened groove, the workmen still 
going and coming, and her despair at the 
spectacle blacker than ever. 

The next day she came up to our chambers. 
She wore her best black gown and no apron, 
and from these signs I concluded it was a 
visit of state. I was right: it was to announce 
her departure. The house, partially rebuilt 
and very much patched up, would never be 
the same. She was too old for hope, and with- 
out the courage to pick up the broken bits of 
her masterpiece and put them together again. 
She was more ill at ease as visitor than as 
housekeeper. The conversation languished, 

223 



Our House 

although I fancied she had something particu- 
lar to say, slight as was her success in saying 
it. We had both been silent for an awkward 
minute when she blurted out abruptly that 
she had never neglected her duty, no mat- 
ter what it might or might not have pleased 
the tenants to give her. I applauded the 
sentiment as admirable, and I said good-by; 
and never once then, and not until several 
days after she left us, did it dawn upon me 
that she was waiting to accept graciously the 
fee It was her right in leaving to expect from 
me. The fact of my having only just tipped 
her liberally had nothing to do with it. A 
housekeeper's departure was an occasion for 
money to pass from the tenant's hand into 
hers, and she had too much respect for her 
duty as housekeeper not to afford me the 
opportunity of doing mine as tenant. It was 
absurd, but I was humiliated In my own eyes 
when I thought of the figure I must cut in hers, 
and I could only hope she would make allow- 
ance for me as an ignorant American. 

How deep I sunk in her esteem, there was no 
means of knowing. I do not think she could 

224 



The Old Housekeeper 

endure to come to her house as a stranger, for 
she never returned. Neither did any news of 
her reach us. I cannot beHeve she enjoyed the 
inactive existence with her daughter to which 
she had retired, and I should be astonished 
if she bore it long. In losing her house she 
had lost her interest in life. Her work in the 
world was done. 



VII 

The New Housekeeper 



VII 

THE NEW HOUSEKEEPER 

It had taken years for the Old Housekeeper 
to mature, and I knew that in the best sense of 
the word she could never be replaced. But the 
knowledge did not prepare me for the New 
Housekeeper. 

Mrs. Haines was a younger and apparently 
stronger woman, but she was so casual in her 
dress, and so eager to emulate the lilies of the 
field, as to convince me that it was not in her, 
under any conditions, to mature into a house- 
keeper at all. It expressed much, I thought, 
that while the Old Housekeeper had always 
been "the Housekeeper," we never knew Mrs. 
Haines by any name but her own. The fact 
that she had a husband was her recommenda- 
tion to the landlord, who had been alarmed by 
the fire and the hysterics into which it threw 
the Old Housekeeper, and now insisted upon 
a man in the family as an indispensable quali- 

229 



Our House 

fication for the post. The advantage might 
have been more obvious had Mr. Haines not 
spent most of his time in dodging the tenants 
and helping them to forget his presence in the 
house. He was not an ill-looking nor ill-man- 
nered man, and shyness was the only explana- 
tion that occurred to me for his perseverance 
in avoiding us. Work could not force him from 
his retirement. Mrs. Haines said that he was 
a carpenter by trade, but the only ability I ever 
knew him to display was in evading whatever 
job I was hopeful enough to offer him. Besides, 
though it might be hard to say what I think 
a carpenter ought to look like, I was certain he 
did not look like one, and others shared my 
doubts. 

The rumour spread through our street — 
where everybody rejoices in the knowledge of 
everything about everybody else who lives in 
it — that he had once been in the Civil Ser- 
vice, but had married beneath him and come 
down in the world. How the rumour originated 
I never asked, or never was told if I did ask; 
but it was so evident that he shrank from the 
practice of the carpenter's trade that once we 

230 



The New Housekeeper 

sent him with a letter to the Publisher — who 
shares our love of the neighbourhood to the 
point, not only of publishing from it, but of liv- 
ing in it — asking if some sort of place could not 
be found for him in the office. It was found, I 
am afraid to his disappointment, for he never 
made any effort to fill it, and was more dili- 
gent than ever in keeping out of our way. If 
he saw us coming, on the rare occasions when 
he stood at the front door, or the rarer when he 
cleaned the gas-bracket above it, he would run 
if there was time, or, if there was not, turn his 
head and stare fixedly in the other direction 
that he might escape speaking to us. As the 
months went on, he was never caught cleaning 
anything or doing anything in the shape of 
work, except sometimes, furtively, as if afraid 
of being detected in the act, shutting the front 
door when the clocks of the neighbourhood 
struck eleven. He was far less of a safeguard 
to us than I often fancied he thought we were 
to him. 

Mrs. Haines was sufficiently unlike him to 
account for one part of the rumour. She was 
coarse in appearance and disagreeable In man- 

231 



Our House 

ner, always on the defensive, always on the 
verge of flying into a temper. She had no ob- 
jection to showing herself; on the contrary, 
she was perpetually about, hunting for faults 
to find; but she did object to showing her- 
self with a broom or a duster, a pail or a scrub- 
bing-brush in her hands. I shuddered some- 
times at the thought of the shock to the Old 
Housekeeper if she were to see her hall and 
stairs. We could bring up coal now at any hour 
or all day long. And yet Mrs. Haines tyran- 
nized over us in her own fashion, and her 
tyranny was the more unbearable because it 
had no end except to spare herself trouble. Her 
one thought was to do nothing and get paid for 
it. She resented extra exertion without extra 
compensation. We never had been so bullied 
about coal under the old regime as we were 
under hers about a drain-pipe with a trick of 
overflowing. It might have drowned us in our 
chambers and she would not have stirred to 
save us; but its outlet was in a little paved 
court back of her kitchen, which it was one of 
her duties to keep in order, and she considered 
every overflow a rank injustice. She held the 
232 



The New Housekeeper 

tenants in turn responsible, and would descend 
upon us like a Fury upbraiding us for our care- 
lessness. It would never have surprised me 
had she ordered us down to clean up the court 
for her. 

I must in fairness add that when extra exer- 
tion meant extra money she did not shirk it. 
Nor was she without accomplishments. She 
was an excellent needlewoman : she altered and 
renovated more than one gown for me, she 
made me chair-covers, she mended my carpets. 
During the first years she was in the house she 
never refused any needlework, and often she 
asked me for more. She would come up and 
wait for me at table on the shortest notice. In 
an emergency she would even cook me a dinner 
which, in its colourless English way, was admir- 
able. There is no denying that she could be 
useful, but her usefulness had a special tariff. 

It was also in her favour that she was a lover 
of cats, and their regard for her was as good as 
a certificate. I came to be on the best of terms 
with hers. Bogie by name, a tall ungainly 
tabby, very much the worse for wear. He 
spent a large part of his time on the street, and 

233 



Our House 

often, as I came or went, he would be returning 
home and would ask me, in away not to be 
resisted, to ring her door-bell for him. Some- 
times I waited to exchange a few remarks with 
him, for, though his voice was husky and not 
one of his attractions, he had always plenty to 
say. On these occasions I was a witness of his 
pleasure in seeing his mistress again, though 
his absence might have been short, and of her 
enthusiasm in receiving him. Unquestionably 
they understood each other, and cats are ani- 
mals of discrimination. 

She extended her affection to cats that did 
not belong to her, and ours came in for many 
of her attentions. Our Jimmy, who had the 
freedom of the streets, often paid her a visit 
on his way out or in, as I knew he would not 
have done if she had not made the time pass 
agreeably; for if he, like all cats, disliked to be 
bored, he knew better than most how to avoid 
the possibility. One of his favourite haunts 
was the near Strand, probably because he was 
sure to meet his friends there. It was a joy to 
him, if we had been out late in^the evening, to 
run across us as we returned. With a fervent 

234 



The New Housekeeper 

"mow" of greeting, he was at our side; and 
then, his tail high in the air, and singing a song 
of rapture, he would come with us to our front 
door, linger until he had seen us open it, when, 
his'mind at rest for our safety, he would hurry- 
back to his revels. We considered this a privi- 
lege, and our respect for Mrs. Haines was in- 
creased when he let her share it, even in the 
daytime. He was known to join her in the 
Strand, not far from Charing Cross, walk with 
her to Wellington Street, cross over, wait po- 
litely while she bought tickets at the Lyceum 
for one of the tenants, cross again, and walk 
back with her. He was also known to sit down 
in the middle of the Strand, and divert the 
traffic better than a "Bobby," until Mrs. 
Haines, when everybody else had failed, en- 
ticed him away. He deserved the tribute of her 
tears, and she shed many, when the Vet kindly 
released him from the physical ruin to which 
exposure and a life of dissipation had reduced 
him. 

William Penn showed her the same friendli- 
ness, but from him it was not so marked, for 
he was a cat of democratic tastes and, next to 

235 



Our House 

his family, preferred the people who worked 
for them. He had not as much opportunity for 
his civiHties as Jimmy, never being allowed to 
leave our chambers. But when Mrs. Haines 
was busy in our kitchen, he occupied more than 
a fair portion of her time, for which she made 
no reduction in the bill. William's charms were 
so apt to distract me from my work that I 
could say nothing, and her last kindness of all 
when he died — in his case of too luxuriant 
living and too little exercise, the Vet said — 
would make me forgive her much worse. Ac- 
cording to my friend. Miss Repplier, a cat 
"considers dying a strictly private affair." But 
William Penn's death-bed was a public affair, 
at least for Augustine and myself, who sat up 
with him through the night of his agony. We 
were both exhausted by morning, unfit to cope 
with the problem of his funeral. Chambers are 
without any convenient corner to serve as cem- 
etery, and I could not trust the most impor- 
tant member of the family to the dust-man for 
burial. I do not know what I should have done 
but for Mrs. Haines. It was she who arranged, 
by a bribe I would willingly have doubled, that 

236 



The New Housekeeper 

during the dinner-hour, when the head-gar- 
dener was out of the way, William should be 
laid to rest in the garden below our windows. 
She was the only mourner with Augustine and 
myself, — J. was abroad, — when, from above, 
we watched the assistant gardener lower him 
into his little grave under the tree where the 
wood-pigeons have their nest. 

If I try now to make the best of what was 
good in Mrs. Haines, at the time she did not 
give me much chance. Grumbling was such a 
habit with her that, even had the Socialists' 
Millennium come, she would have kept on, if 
only because it removed all other reason for 
her grumbles. Her prejudice against work of 
any kind did not lessen her displeasure with 
everybody who did not provide her with work 
of some kind to do. She treated me as if I im- 
posed on her when I asked her to sew or to mend 
or to cook, and she abused the other tenants 
because they did not ask her. This indeed was 
her principal grievance. She could not see why 
they were in the house if it were not to increase 
her income, and she hated the landlord for hav- 
ing led her to believe they would. She paid me 

237 



Our House 

innumerable visits, the object of which never 
varied. It was to borrow, which she did with- 
out shame or apology. She never hesitated in 
her demands, she never cringed. She ran 
short because the other tenants were not doing 
the fair and square thing by her, and she did 
not see why she should not draw upon me for 
help. One inexhaustible debt was the monthly 
bill for her furniture, bought on the instalment 
system and forfeited if any one instalment 
were not met. I do not remember how many 
pounds I advanced, but enough to suggest that 
she had furnished her rooms, of which she 
never gave me as much as a glimpse, in a style 
far beyond her means. I could afford to be 
amiable, for I knew I could make her pay me 
back in work, though my continual loans did 
so little to improve her financial affairs that 
after a while my patience gave out, and I 
refused to advance another penny. 

It was not until the illness of her husband, 
after they had been in the house for some two 
years, that I realized the true condition of 
things behind the door they kept so carefully 
closed. The illness was sudden, so far as I 

238 



The New Housekeeper 

knew. I had not seen Mr. Haines for long, but 
I was accustomed to not seeing him, and curi- 
ously, when Mrs. Haines's need was greatest, 
she showed some reluctance in asking to be 
helped out of it. Her husband was dying be- 
fore she appealed to anybody, and then it was 
not to me, but to Mrs. Burden, my old char- 
woman, who was so poor that I had always 
fancied that to be poorer still meant to live in 
the streets or on the rates. But Mrs. Haines 
was so much worse oif, that Mrs. Burden, in 
telling me about it, thanked Our Lady that she 
had never fallen so low. It was cold winter and 
there was no fire, no coal, no wood, behind the 
closed door. The furniture for which I had ad- 
vanced so many pounds consisted, I now found 
out, of two or three rickety chairs and a square 
of tattered carpet in the front room, a few pots 
and pans in the kitchen. In the dark bedroom 
between, the dying man lay on a hard board 
stretched on the top of a packing-box, shiver- 
ing under his threadbare overcoat, so pitiful 
in his misery and suffering that Mrs. Burden 
was moved to compassion and hurried home 
to fetch him the blankets from her own bed 

239 



Our House 

and buy him a pennyworth of milk on the 
way. 

When the tenants knew how it was with 
Mrs. Haines and her husband, as now they 
could not help knowing, they remembered 
only that he was ill, and they sent for the doc- 
tor and paid for medicine, and did what they 
could to lighten the gloom of the two or three 
days left to him. And they arranged for a 
decent burial, feeling, I think, that a man who 
had been in the Civil Service should not lie in 
a pauper's grave. For a week or so we won- 
dered again who he was, why he kept so per- 
sistently out of sight; after that we thought as 
little of him as when he had skulked, a shadow, 
between his rooms and the street door on the 
stroke of eleven. 

Hitherto everybody had been patient with 
Mrs. Haines, for the London housekeeper, 
though she has not got the tenants as com- 
pletely in her power as the Paris concierge, can, 
if she wants, make things very disagreeable 
for them. Now that she was alone in the 
world, everybody was kind to her. The landlord 
overlooked his announced decision "to sack 

240 



The New Housekeeper 

the pair," and retained her as housekeeper, 
though In losing her husband she had lost her 
principal recommendation. The tenants raised 
a fund to enable her to buy the mourning 
which is often a consolation In widowhood. 
Work was offered to her In chambers which 
she had never entered before, and I added to 
the tasks In ours. The housekeepers in the 
street with families to support must have 
envied her. She had her rooms rent free, wages 
from the landlord, plenty of extra work, and 
though this might not seem affluence to people 
who do not measure their income by pence or 
scramble for the odd shilling, it was wealth in 
housekeeping circles. 

Mrs. Haines, however, did not see her posi- 
tion in that light. She had complained when 
work was not offered to her, she complained 
more bitterly when it was. Perhaps her hus- 
band had had some restraining influence upon 
her. I cannot say; but certainly once he was 
gone, she gave up all pretence of controlling 
her temper. She would sweep like a hurricane 
through the house, raging and raving, on the 
slightest provocation. She led us a worse life 

241 



Our House 

than ever over the drain-pipe. She left the 
house more and more to take care of itself, 
dust lying thick wherever dust could lie, the 
stairs turned to a dingy grey, the walls black- 
ened with London smoke and grime. Once in a 
while she hired a forlorn, ragged old woman to 
wash the stairs and brush the front-door mat, 
for in London, more than anywhere else, "pov- 
erty is a comparative thing," and every degree 
has one below to "soothe" it. No matter how 
hard up Mrs. Haines was, she managed to 
scrape together a few pennies to pay to have 
the work done for her rather than do it herself. 
The greater part of her leisure she spent out of 
the house, and when I passed her door I would 
see pinned up on it a bit of paper stating in 
neat, even elegant, writing, "Apply on the 
First Floor for the Housekeeper," or "Gone 
out. Back in ten minutes"; and hours, some- 
times days, later the same notice would still 
be there. She became as neglectful of herself 
as of the house: her one dress grew shabbier 
and shabbier, her apron was discarded, no de- 
tail of her toilet was attended to except the 
frizzing of her coarse black hair. All this came 
242 



The New Housekeeper 

about not at once, but step by step, and things 
were very bad before J. and I admitted, even 
to each other, that she was a disgrace to the 
house. We would admit it to nobody else, and 
to my surprise the other tenants were as for- 
bearing. I suppose it was because they under- 
stood, as well as we did, that at a word to the 
landlord she would be adrift in London, where 
for one vacant post of housekeeper there are 
a hundred applications. To banish her from 
our own chambers, however, was not to drive 
her to the workhouse, and I called for her ser- 
vices less and less often. 

There was another reason for my not em- 
ploying her to which I have not so far referred, 
the reason really of her slovenliness and bad 
temper and gradual deterioration. I shut my 
eyes as long as I could. But I was prepared for 
the whispers that began to be heard, not only 
in our house, but up and down our street. What 
started them I do not know, but the morning 
and evening gatherings of the housekeepers 
at their doors were not held for nothing, and 
presently it got about that Mrs. Haines had 
been seen stealing in and out of a public-house, 

243 



Our House 

and that this public-house was just beyond the 
border-line of the Quarter, which looked as if 
she were endeavouring to escape the vigilant 
eyes of our gossips. Then, as invariably hap- 
pens, the whispers grew louder, the evidence 
against her circumstantial, and everybody 
was saying quite openly where her money dis- 
appeared and why she became shabbier, her 
rooms barer, and the house more disreputable. 
It leaked out that her husband also had been 
seen flitting from public-house to public-house; 
and, the game of concealment by this time be- 
ing up, it was bluntly said that drink had killed 
him, as it would Mrs. Haines if she went on as 
she was going. 

I had kept my suspicions to myself, but she 
had never come to our chambers at the hour 
of lunch or dinner that there was not an un- 
usual drain upon our modest wine-cellar. I 
could not fancy that it was merely a coinci- 
dence, that friends dining with us were in- 
variably thirstier when she waited or cooked; 
but her appearance had been the invariable 
signal for the disappearance of our wine at a 
rate that made my employment of her a costly 

244 



The New Housekeeper 

luxury. I never saw her when I could declare 
she had been drinking, but drink she did, and 
there was no use my beating about the bush 
and calling it by another name. It would have 
been less hopeless had she occasionally be- 
trayed herself, had her speech thickened and 
her walk become unsteady. But hers was the 
deadliest form of the evil, because it gave no 
sign. There was nothing to check it except 
every now and then a mysterious attack of 
illness, — which she said defied the doctor 
though it defied nobody in the house, — or 
the want of money; but a housekeeper must 
be far gone if she cannot pick up a shilling here 
and a half-crown there. I was the last of the 
old tenants to employ her, but after I aban- 
doned her she still had another chance with a 
newcomer who took the chambers below ours, 
and, finding them too small to keep more than 
one servant, engaged her for a liberal amount 
of work. She bought aprons and a new black 
blouse and skirt, and she was so spruce and 
neat in them that I was encouraged to hope. 
But before the end of the first week, she was 
met on the stairs coming down from his room 

245 



Our House 

to hers with a bottle under her apron; at the 
end of the second she was dismissed. 

I hardly dare think how she lived after this. 
With every Christmas there was a short period 
of prosperity, though it dwindled as the ten- 
ants began to realize where their money went. 
For a time J. and I got her to keep our bi- 
cycles, other people in the house followed suit, 
and during several months she was paid rent 
for as many as six, keeping them in the empty 
sitting-room from which even the rickety 
chairs had disappeared, and where the floor 
now was thick with grease and stained with 
oil. If we had trunks to store or boxes to un- 
pack, she would let us the same room for as 
long as we wanted, and so she managed, one 
way or the other, by hook or by crook. But it 
was a makeshift existence, all the more so 
when her habits began to tell on her physically. 
She was ill half the time, and by the end of her 
fourth year in the house, I do not believe she 
could have sewed or waited or cooked, had 
she had the chance. She had no friends, no 
companions, save her cat. They were a grim 
pair, she with hungry, shifty eyes glowing like 

246 



The New Housekeeper 

fires in the pallor of her face, he more gaunt 
and ungainly than ever: for a witch and her 
famiHar they would have been burnt not so 
many hundred years ago. 

Then we heard that she was taking in lodgers, 
that women with the look of hunted creatures 
stole into her rooms at strange hours of the 
night. Some said they were waifs and strays 
from the "Halls," others that they were wan- 
derers from the Strand; all agreed that, who- 
ever they were, they must be as desperately 
poor as she, to seek shelter where the only 
bed was the floor. Much had been passed over, 
but I knew that such lodgers were more than 
landlord and tenants could endure, and I had 
not to be a prophet to foresee that the end was 
approaching. 

It came more speedily than I thought, 
though the manner of it was not left to land- 
lord and tenants. Christmas, her fifth in the 
house, had filled her purse again. Tenants 
were less liberal, it is true, but she must have 
had at least five or six pounds, to which a tur- 
key and plum pudding had been added by 
our neighbour across the hall, who was of a 

247 



Our House 

generous turn. She had therefore the essen- 
tials of what passes for a merry Christmas, but 
how much merriment there was in hers I had 
no way of telling. On holidays in London I 
keep indoors if I can, not caring to face the 
sadness of the streets or the dreariness of 
house-parties, and I did not go downstairs on 
Christmas Day, nor on Boxing Day which is 
the day after. Mrs. Haines, if she came up, 
did not present herself at our chambers. I 
trust she was gay because, as it turned out, 
it was her last chance for gaiety at this or any 
other season. In the middle of the night fol- 
lowing Boxing Day she was seized with one 
of her mysterious attacks. A lodger was with 
her, but, from fright, or stupidity, or perhaps 
worse, called no one till dawn, when she rang 
up the housekeeper next door and vanished. 
The housekeeper next door went at once for 
the doctor who attends to us all in the Quarter. 
It was too late. Mrs. Haines was dead when 
he reached the house. 

Death was merciful, freeing her from the 
evil fate that threatened, for she was at 
the end of everything. She went out of the 

24a 



The New Housekeeper 

world as naked as she came into it. Her rooms 
were empty, there was not so much as a crust 
of bread in her kitchen, in her purse were two 
farthings. Her only clothes were those she had 
just taken off and the few rags wrapped about 
her for the night. Destitution could not be 
more complete, and the horror was to find it, 
not round the corner, not at the door, but in 
the very house, and, worse, to know that it de- 
served no pity. As she had sown, so had she 
reaped, and the grave was the kindliest shelter 
for the harvest. 

The day after, her sister appeared, from 
where, summoned by whom, I do not know. She 
was a decent, serious woman, who attended to 
everything, and when the funeral was over, 
called on all the tenants. She wanted, she 
told me, to thank us for all our kindness to 
her sister, whom kindness had so little helped. 
She volunteered no explanation, she only sighed 
her regrets. She could not understand, she 
said. 

Nor could I. No doubt, daily in the slums, 
many women die as destitute. But they never 
had their chance. Mrs. Haines had hers, and 

249 



Our House 

a fair one as these things go. Her tragedy has 
shaken my confidence in the reformers to- 
day who would work the miracle, and, with 
equal chances for all men, transform this sad 
world of ours into Utopia. 



VIII 
Our Beggars 



VIII 

OUR BEGGARS 

I KNOW our Beggars by their ring. When 
the front door-bell is pulled with insolent vio- 
lence, "That," I say to myself, "is a Beggar," 
and I am usually right. 

Ours are not the Beggars of whose decay 
Elia complained; though he could not have 
believed that the art of begging was in any 
more danger of being lost than the art of ly- 
ing. His sort have still their place at the 
crowded crossing, at the corners of streets and 
turnings of alleys — they are always with us. 
I rarely go out that I do not meet the cripple 
who swings himself along on his crutches 
through the throngs at Charing Cross, or the 
blind man who taps his way down the Strand, 
or the paralytic in her little cart close to St. 
Martin's, and I too should complain were 
they to disappear. These are Beggars I do 
not mind. They have their picturesque uses. 

253 



Our House 

They carry on an old tradition. They are 
licensed to molest me, and their demands, 
with their thanks when I give and their curses 
when I do not, are the methods of a venerable 
and honoured calling. Besides, I can escape 
them if I choose. I can cross the street at the 
approach of the cripple, I can dodge the blind 
man, I can look away as I pass the paralytic, 
and so avoid the irritation of giving when I do 
not want to or the discomfort of hearing their 
opinion of me when I refuse. But to our Beg- 
gars I do object, and from them there is no 
escape. They belong to a new species, and 
have abandoned the earlier methods as crude 
and primitive. They make a profession neither 
of disease nor of deformity, but of having 
come down in the world. They scorn to stoop 
to "rags and the wallet," which they have ex- 
changed for a top hat and frock coat. They 
take out no license, for they never beg in the 
streets; instead, they assault us at our door, 
where they do not ask for alms but claim the 
gift, they call a loan, as their right. They are 
bullies, brigands, who would thrust the virtue 
of charity upon us, and if, as the philosopher 

254 



Our Beggars 

thinks, it is a test of manners to receive, they 
come out of it with dignity, for their fiction 
of a loan saves them, and us, from the profes- 
sional profuseness of the Beggar's thanks. 

It was only when I moved into chambers in 
the Quarter that they began to come to see me. 
Hitherto, my life in London had been spent 
in lodgings, where, if I was never free from 
Beggars in the form of those intimate friends 
who are always short of ten pounds to pay their 
rent or ten shillings to buy a hat, it was the 
landlady's affair when the Beggars who were 
strangers called. 

Chambers, however, gave me a front door at 
which they could ring and an address in the 
Directory in which they could find out where 
the door was; and had my object been to 
make a study of them and their manners, I 
could not have hit upon a better place to col- 
lect my material. 

Not that Beggars are encouraged in the 
Quarter, where more than one society devoted 
to their scientific suppression has, or has had, 
an office, and where the lady opposite does 
not wait for science, but sends them flying the 
255 



Our House 

minute she catches them In our streets. The 
man who loafs in front of our club, and who 
opens cab-doors for members, and as many- 
more as he can capture, might be mistaken 
for a Beggar by anybody who did not know 
the Quarter, but we who do know it under- 
stand that he is loafing by special appoint- 
ment. The small boy who has lately taken to 
selling his single box of matches on our Ter- 
race does so officially, as the brass label on his 
arm explains. And nothing could be more ex- 
ceptional than the cheerful person who the 
other day reeled after the Publisher and my- 
self into one of our houses where there Is an 
elevator — for to elevators we have come In the 
Quarter — the thin end of the modern wedge 
that threatens Its destruction — and addressed 
the Publisher so affectionately as "Colonel" 
that we both retreated Into the elevator and 
pressed the button for the top floor. 

But the Beggars we keep off our streets, we 
cannot keep from our front doors. J. and I had 
hardly settled in chambers before we were 
besieged. People were immediately in need of 
our help who up till then had managed with- 

256 



Our Beggars 

out It, and to our annoyance they have been 
in need of it ever since. They present them- 
selves in so many different guises, by so many 
different methods, that it is impossible to be 
on our guard against them all. Some sneak 
in with the post, and our correspondence has 
doubled in bulk. Dukes, Earls, Marquises, 
Baronets, favour us with lithographed let- 
ters, signing their names at the bottom, writ- 
ing ours at the top, and demanding our con- 
tribution to charities they approve, as the 
price of so amazing a condescension. Ladies 
of rank cannot give their benevolent balls and 
banquets unless we buy tickets, nor can they 
conceive of our dismissing their personal ap- 
peal. Clergymen start missions that we may 
finance them, bazaars are opened that we may 
fill the stalls with the free offering of the work 
by which we make our living, and albums are 
raffled that we may grace them with our auto- 
graphs. We might think that the post was 
invented for the benefit of people whose idea 
of charity is to do the begging and get us to 
do the giving. Many of our Beggars like better 
to beg in person: sometimes as nurses with 

257 



Our House 

tickets to sell for a concert, or as Little Sisters 
of the Poor — whom I welcome, having pre- 
served a sentiment for any variety of cap and 
veil since my own convent days; sometimes 
as people with things to sell at the biggest 
price, that we would not want at the lowest, 
or with patent inventions that we would not 
take as a gift, and who are indignant if we de- 
cline to be taxed for the privilege of not buy- 
ing or subscribing. But the most numerous 
of our Beggars, the most persistent, the most 
liberal in their expectations, are the men, and 
more occasionally the women, who, having 
come down in the world, look to us to set them 
up again, and would be the first to resent it 
if our generosity ran to any such extravagant 
lengths. 

Their patronage of the Quarter is doubtless 
due, partly to its being close to the Strand, 
which is an excellent centre for their line of 
business; partly to a convenient custom with 
us of leaving all street doors hospitably open 
and inscribing the names of tenants in big gilt 
letters on the wall just inside ; partly to the 
fact that we are not five minutes from a Free 

258 



Our Beggars 

Library, where they can agreeably fill their 
hours of leisure by the study of "Who 's Who," 
"The Year's Art," and other books in which 
publishers obligingly supply the information 
about us which to them is as valuable an as- 
set as a crutch to the cripple or a staff to the 
blind. Provided by the Directory with our 
address, they may already know where to 
look us up and how to establish an acquaint- 
ance by asking for us by name at our door; 
but it is this cramming in the facts of our life 
that enables them to talk to us familiarly about 
our work until acquaintance has ripened into 
intimacy and the business of begging is put 
on a personal and friendly footing. Great as is 
the good which Mr. Carnegie must have hoped 
to accomplish by his Free Libraries, even he 
could have had no idea of the boon they might 
prove to Beggars and the healthy stimulus 
to the art of begging which they develop. 

In the beginning our Beggars had no great 
fault to find with us. Their frock coats and 
top hats, signs of real British respectability, 
carried them past the British porter and the 
British servant. When they crossed our thresh- 
259 



Our House 

old, some remnant of the barbarous instinct 
of hospitality compelled us to receive them with 
civility, if not with cordiality. We never went 
so far as, with the Spaniard, to offer them our 
house and all that is in it, another instinct 
warning us how little they would mind taking 
us at our word; nor did hospitality push us 
to the extreme of being hoodwinked by their 
tales. But in those days we seldom let them 
go without something, which was always more 
than they deserved since they deserved nothing. 
If there is such a thing as a Beggar's Baedeker, 
I am sure our chambers were specially re- 
commended in earlier editions. In justice, I 
must confess that they gave us entertainment 
for our money, and that the very tricks of the 
trade were amusing — that is, while the novelty 
lasted. We liked the splendid assurance of 
their manner; the pretended carelessness with 
which a foot was quickly thrust through the 
opening of the door so they could be shut out 
only by force; the important air with which 
they asked for a few minutes' talk; the insinu- 
ating smile with which they presumed that 
we remembered them; their cool assumption 
260 



Our Beggars 

that their burden was ours, and that the kind- 
ness was all on their side for permitting us the 
privilege of bearing it. And we liked no less 
their infinite trouble in inventing romances 
about themselves that Munchausen could not 
have beaten, their dramatic use of foggy nights 
and wild storms, their ingenuity in discover- 
ing a bond between us, and their plausibility 
in proving why it obliged us to meet their 
temporary difficulties which were never of 
course of their own making. Nor could we but 
admire their superiority to mere charity, their 
belief in the equal division of wealth, their 
indifference as to who did the work to create 
the wealth so long as they did not do it them- 
selves, and their trust in the obligation im- 
posed by a craft in common. Had they be- 
stowed half the pains in practising this craft 
that they squandered In wheedling a few 
shillings from us on the strength of it, they 
must long since have been acknowledged its 
masters. 

The first of our Beggars, whom I probably 
remember the better because he was the first, 
flattered me by introducing himself as a fel- 

261 



Our House 

low author at a time when I had published but 
one book and had won by it neither fame nor 
fortune. What he had pubHshed himself he 
did not think it worth while to mention, but 
the powers of imagination he revealed in his 
talk should have secured his reputation in 
print. I have rarely listened to anybody so 
fluent, I could not have got a word in had I 
wanted to. It never seemed to occur to him 
that I might not be as bent upon listening to 
his story as he upon telling it. He made it 
quite a personal matter between us. I would 
understand, he said, and the inference was that 
nobody else could, the bitterness of his awak- 
ening when the talented woman whom he had 
revered as the kindliest of her sex betrayed 
herself to him as the most cruel. For long, in 
her Florentine villa, he had been Secretary to 
Ouida, whom he found so charming and con- 
siderate that he could only marvel at all the 
gossip about her whims and fancies. Then, one 
morning, he was writing a letter at her dicta- 
tion and by oversight he spelt disappointment 
with one p, a trifling error which, as I knew, 
any gentleman or scholar was liable to. She 
262 



Our Beggars 

flew into a rage, she turned him out of the 
villa without hearing a word, she pursued him 
into the garden, she set her dogs — colossal 
staghounds — on him, he had to run for his 
life, had even to vault over the garden gate, 
I could picture to myself with what disas- 
trous consequences to his coat and trousers. 
And she was so vindictive that she would 
neither send him his clothes nor pay him a 
penny she owed him. He had too fine a sense 
of gallantry to go to law with a lady, he dared 
not remain in Florence where the report was 
that he went in danger of his life. There was 
nothing to do but to return to England, and 
— well — here he was, with a new outfit to 
buy before he could accept the admirable 
position offered to him, for he had not to as- 
sure me that a man of his competency was 
everywhere in demand; it was very awkward, 
and — in short — he looked to me as a fellow 
author to tide him over the awkwardness. I 
can laugh now at my absurd embarrassment 
when finally he came to a full stop. I did not 
have to wait for his exposure in the next num- 
ber of "The Author" to realize that he was 
263 



Our House 

"an unscrupulous impostor." But I was too 
shy to call him one to his face, and I actually 
murmured polite concern and "advanced" I 
have forgotten what, to be rid of him. 

Out of compliment to J., our Beggars pose 
as artists no less frequently than as authors. 
If the artist himself, when accident or bad 
luck has got him into a tight place, likes best 
to come to his fellow artist to get him out of 
it, he is the first to pay his debts and the first 
debt he pays is to the artist who saw him 
through. But this has nothing to do with our 
Beggars who have chosen art as an unemploy- 
ment and with whom accident or bad luck is 
deliberately chronic. They look upon art as a 
gilt-edged investment that should bring them 
in a dividend, however remote their connection 
with it. According to them, an artist entitles 
all his family, even to the second and third 
generation, to a share in J.'s modest income, 
though J. himself is not at all of their manner 
of thinking. Grandsons of famous wood-en- 
gravers, nephews of editors of illustrated pa- 
pers, cousins of publishers of popular maga- 
zines, fathers of painters, brothers, sons, and 
264 



Our Beggars 

uncles of every sort of artist, even sisters, 
daughters, and aunts who take advantage of 
their talent for pathos and "crocodile wisdom 
of shedding tears when they should devour," 
— all have sought to impress upon him that 
the sole reason for their existence is to live at 
his expense. He may suggest meekly that he 
subscribes to benevolent institutions and so- 
cieties founded for the relief of artists and 
artists' families in just their difficulties. They 
are glib in excuses for making their applica- 
tion to him instead, and they evidently think 
he ought to be grateful to them for putting 
him in the way of enjoying the blessing pro- 
mised to those who give. 

The most ambitious reckon their needs on 
a princely scale, as if determined to beg, when 
they have to, with all their might. One artist, 
distinguished in his youth, writes to J., from 
the Cafe Royal where, in his old age, he makes 
a habit of dining and finding himself towards 
midnight ridiculously without a penny in his 
pocket, an emergency in which a five-pound 
note by return of messenger will oblige. An- 
other, whose business hours are as late, comes 
265 



Our House 

in person for a "fiver," his last train to his 
suburban home being on the point of start- 
ing and he as ridiculously penniless, except for 
a cheque for a hundred pounds just received 
from a publisher, which he cannot change at 
that time of night. The more humble have so 
much less lavish a standard that half a crown 
will meet their liabilities, or else a sum left 
to the generosity of the giver. A youth, fre- 
quent in his visits, never aspires above the 
fare of a hansom waiting below, while a painter 
of mature years appears only on occasions 
of public rejoicing or mourning when there is 
no telling to what extent emotion may loosen 
the purse strings. Some bring their pictures as 
security, or the pictures of famous ancestors 
who have become bewilderingly prolific since 
their death; some plead for their work to be 
taken out of pawn; some want to pose in a few 
days, and these J. recommends to the Keeper 
of the Royal Academy; and some are so subtle 
in their argument that we fail to follow it. We 
are still wondering what could have been the 
motive of the excited little man who burst in 
upon J. a few days ago with a breathless in- 
266 



Our Beggars 

quiiy as to how much he charged for painting 
polo ponies for officers, and who bolted as pre- 
cipitately when J. said that he knew nothing 
about polo, and had never painted a pony in 
his life. But for sheer irrelevance none has 
surpassed the American whom, in J.'s absence, 
I was called upon to interview, and who as- 
sured me that, having begun life as an artist 
and later turned model, he had tramped all 
the way from New Orleans to New York and 
then worked his way over on a cattleship to 
London with no other object in view than to 
sit to J. If I regret that my countrymen in 
England borrow the trick of begging from the 
native, it is some satisfaction to have them 
excel in it. When I represented to the model 
from New Orleans that J., as far as I could see, 
would have no use for him, he was quite ready 
to take a shilling in place of the sitting, and 
when I would not give him a shilling, he de- 
clared himself repaid by his pleasant chat with 
a compatriot. He must have thought better 
of it afterwards and decided that something 
more substantial was owing to him, for three 
weeks later his visit was followed by a letter : — 
267 



Our House 

Madam, — I know how sorry you will be 
to hear that since my little talk with you I 
have been dangerously sick in a hospital. The 
doctors have now discharged me, but they say 
I must do no work of any kind for ten days, 
though an artist is waiting for me to sit to 
him for an important picture. They advise me 
to strengthen myself with nourishing food in 
the meanwhile. Will you therefore please 
send me 

3 dozen new-laid eggs 

I lb. of fresh butter 

I lb. of coffee 

1 lb. of tea 

2 lbs. of sugar 

I dozen of oranges. 
Thanking you in advance, 
I am. Madam, 

Gratefully yours. 

There are periods when I am convinced that 
not art, not literature, but journalism is the 
most impecunious of the professions, and that 
all Fleet Street, to which the Quarter is fairly 
convenient, must be out of work. It is aston- 

268 



Our Beggars 

ishing how often it depends upon our financial 
backing to get into work again, though de- 
pendence could not be more misplaced, for a 
certain little transaction with a guileless youth 
whose future hung on a journey to Russia has 
given us all the experience of the kind, or a 
great deal more than we want. As astonishing 
is the number of journalists who cherish as 
their happiest recollections the years they were 
with us on the staff of London, New York, or 
Philadelphia papers for which we never wrote 
a line. One even grew sentimental over the 
"good old days" on the Philadelphia "Public 
Ledger " with J.'s father who, to our knowledge, 
passed his life without as much as seeing the 
inside of a newspaper office. But the journal- 
ist persisted until J. vowed that he never had 
a father, that he never was in Philadelphia, 
that he never heard of the "Ledger" : then 
the poor man fled. Astonishing, too, is the 
count they keep of the seasons. Disaster is 
most apt to overtake them at those holiday 
times when Dickens has taught that hearts 
are tender and purses overflow. For them 
Christmas spells catastrophe, and it has ceased 
269 



Our House 

to be a surprise to hear their ring on Christ- 
mas Eve. As a rule, a shilling will avert the 
catastrophe and enable them to exchange the 
cold streets for a warm fireside, hunger for 
feasting, though I recall a reporter for whom 
it could not be done under a ticket to Paris. 
The Paris edition of the ''New York Herald" 
had engaged him on condition that he was in the 
office not later than Christmas morning. He 
was ready to start, but — there was the ticket, 
and, for no particular reason except that it 
was Christmas Eve, J. was to have the plea- 
sure of paying for it. 

" Why not apply to the ' New York Herald' 
office here?" J. asked. 

The reporter beamed: "My dear sir, the 
very thing, the very thing. Why did n't I think 
of it before ? I will go at once. Thank you, sir, 
thank you ! " 

He was back in an hour, radiant, the ticket 
in his hand, but held tight, so that just one end 
showed, as if he was afraid of losing it. "You 
see, sir, it was the right tip, but I must have 
some coffee at Dieppe, and I have n't one penny 
over. I can manage with a shilling, sir, and 
270 



Our Beggars 

if you would be so kind a couple more for a 
cab in Paris." 

He did not know his man. J. would go, or 
rather he has gone, without breakfast or dinner 
and any distance on foot when work was at 
stake. But the reporter was so startled by the 
suggestion of such hardships for himself that 
he dropped the ticket on the floor, and before 
he could snatch it up again J. had seen that 
it was good not for Paris, but for a 'bus in the 
Strand. 

I wish I had been half as stern with the as- 
sistant editor from Philadelphia. I knew him 
for what he was the minute he came into the 
room. He was decently, even jauntily dressed, 
but there hung about him the smell of stale 
cigars and whiskey, which always hangs about 
those of our Beggars who do not fill our cham- 
bers with the sicklier smell of drugs. Nor did 
I think much of his story. He related it at 
length with elegance of manner and speech, 
but it was a poor one, inviting doubt. The card 
he played was the one he sent in with a well- 
known Philadelphia name on it, and he strength- 
ened the effect by his talk of the artist with 
271 



Our House 

whom he once shared rooms at Eleventh 
and Spruce streets. That " fetched me." For 
Eleventh and Spruce streets must ever mean 
for me the red brick house with the white 
marble steps and green shutters, the pleasant 
garden opposite full of trees green and shady 
on hot summer days, the leisurely horse-cars 
jingling slowly by, — the house that is so big 
in all the memories of my childhood and youth. 
If I can help it, nobody shall ever know what 
his having lived in its neighbourhood cost me. 
I was foolish, no doubt, but I gave with my 
eyes open: sentiment sometimes is not too 
dearly bought at the price of a little folly. 

Were Covent Garden not within such easy 
reach of the Quarter I could scarcely account 
for the trust which the needy musician places 
in us. Certainly it is because of no effort 
or encouragement on our side. We have 
small connection with the musical world, and 
whether because of the size of the singers or 
the commercial atmosphere at Baireuth, J. 
since we heard ''Parsifal" there will not be 
induced to go to the opera anywhere, or to ven- 
ture upon a concert. Under the circumstances, 

272 



Our Beggars 

the most imaginative musician could not 
make believe in a professional bond between us, 
though there is nothing to shake his faith in 
the kinship of all the arts and, therefore, in 
our readiness to support the stray tenor or 
violinist who cannot support himself. But 
imagination, anyway, is not his strong point. 
He seldom displays the richness of fancy of 
our other Beggars, and I can recall only one, 
a pianist who had grasped the possibilities of 
"Who 's Whoc" His use of it, however, went 
far to atone for the neglect of the rest. With its 
aid he had discovered not only that we were 
Philadelphians, but that Mr. David Bispham 
was also, and he had to let off his enthusiasm 
over Philadelphia and "dear old Dave Bisp- 
ham" before he got down to business. There 
his originality gave out. His was the same old 
story of a run of misfortunes and disappoint- 
ments — " it could never have happened if 
dear old Dave Bispham had been in town" — 
and the climax was the dying wife for whom 
our sympathy has been asked too often for a 
particle to be left. The only difference was 
that she took rather longer in dying than usual, 
273 



Our House 

and the pianist returned to report her removal 
from the shelter of a friend's house to the hos- 
pital, from the hospital to lodgings, and from 
the lodgings he threatened us with the spectacle 
of her drawing her last breath in the gutter 
if we did not, then and there, pay his landlady 
and his doctor and his friend to whom he was 
deeply in debt. We were spared her death, 
probably because by that time the pianist 
saw the wisdom of carrying the story of her 
sufferings to more responsive ears, though it 
is not likely that he met with much success 
anywhere. He was too well dressed for the 
part. With his brand-new frock coat and im- 
maculate silk hat, with his gold-mounted cane 
and Suede gloves, he was better equipped for 
the jeune premier warbling of love, than for 
the grief-stricken husband watching in penni- 
less desolation by the bedside of a dying wife. 
The Quarter is also within an easy stroll for 
actors who, when their hard times come, show 
an unwarranted confidence in us, though J., 
if anything, disdains the theatre more than the 
opera. They take advantage of their training 
and bring the artist's zeal to the role of Beg- 

274 



Our Beggars 

gars, but I have known them to be shocked 
back suddenly into their natural selves by J.'s 
blunt refusal to hear them out. One, giving 
the aristocratic name of Mr. Vivian Stewart 
and further describing himself on his card as 
"Lead Character late of the Lyceum," was so 
dismayed when J. cut his lines short with a 
shilling that he lost his cue entirely and whined, 
"Don't you think, sir, you could make it eigh- 
teenpence?" The most accomplished in the role 
was a young actor from York. He had the intel- 
ligence to suspect that the profession does not 
monopolize the interest of all the world and to 
pretend that it did not monopolize his own. He 
therefore appeared in the double part of cyclist 
and actor. He reminded J. of a cycling dinner 
at York several winters before at which both 
were present. J. remembered the dinner, but not 
the cyclist, who was not a bit put out but de- 
claimed upon "the freemasonry of the wheel," 
and anticipated J.'s joy as fellow sportsman 
in hearing of the new engagement just offered 
to him. It would be the making of him and 
his reputation, but — no bad luck has ever 
yet robbed our Beggars of that useful preposi- 
275 



Our House 

tion — but, It depended upon his leaving Lon- 
don within an hour, and the usual events over 
which our Beggars never have control, found 
him with ten shillings less than his railway fare. 
A loan at this critical point would save his 
career, and to-morrow the money would be 
returned. His visit dates back to the early 
period, when"our hospitality had not outgrown 
the barbarous stage, and his career was saved, 
temporarily. After six months' silence, the 
actor reappeared. With his first word of greet- 
ing he took a half sovereign from his waistcoat 
pocket and regretted his delay in paying it 
back. But, in the mean while, much had hap- 
pened. He had lost his promising engagement; 
he had found a wife and was on the point of 
losing her, for she was another of the many 
wives at death's door; he had found a more 
promising engagement and was on the point 
of losing that too, for if he did not settle his 
landlady's bill before the afternoon had passed 
she would seize his possessions, stage proper- 
ties and all, and again events beyond his con- 
trol had emptied his pockets. He would re- 
turn the ten shillings, but we must now lend 
276 



Our Beggars 

him a sovereign. And he was not merely sur- 
prised but deeply hurt because we would not, 
and he stayed to argue it out that if his wife 
died, and his landlady kept his possessions, 
and the engagement was broken, and his ca- 
reer was at an end, the guilt would be ours, — • 
it was in our power to make him or to mar him. 
He was really rather good at denunciation. 
On this occasion it was wasted. He did not 
get the sovereign, but then neither did we 
get the half sovereign which went back into 
his waistcoat pocket at the end of his visit and 
disappeared with him, this time apparently 
forever. 

We are scarcely in as great favour as we 
were with our Beggars. Their courage now is 
apt to ooze from them at our door, which is 
no longer held by a British servant, but by 
Augustine, whom tradition has not taught to 
respect the top hat and frock coat, and be- 
fore whom even the prosperous quail. She 
recognizes the Beggar at a glance, for that 
glance goes at once to his shoes, she having 
found out, unaided by Thackeray, that pov- 
erty, beginning to take possession of a man, 
277 



Our House 

attacks his extremities first/ She has never 
been mistaken except when, in the dusk of 
a winter evening, she shut one of our old 
friends out on the stairs because she had looked 
at his hat instead of his shoes and mistrusted 
the angle at which it was pulled down over 
his eyes. This blunder, for an interval, weak- 
ened her reliance upon her own judgment, but 
she has gradually recovered her confidence, and 
only the Beggars whose courage is screwed to 
the sticking-point, and who sharpen their wits, 
succeed in the skirmish to get past her. When 
they do get past it is not of much use. The 
entertainment they gave us is of a kind that 
palls with repetition. An inclination to lis- 
ten to their stories, to save their careers, to 
set them up on their feet, could survive their 
persecutions in none but the epicure in char- 
ity, which we are not. The obligation of po- 
liteness to Beggars under my roof weighs more 
lightly on my shoulders with their every visit, 
while J., as the result of long experience and 
to save bother, has reduced his treatment of 
them to a system and gives a shilling indis- 
criminately to each and all who call to beg — 
278 



Our Beggars 

when he happens to have one himself. In vain 
I assure him that if his system has the merit 
of simpHcity, it is shocking bad poHtical econ- 
omy, and that every shilling given is a shilling 
thrown away. In vain I remind him that Au- 
gustine, shadowing our Beggars from our cham- 
bers, saw the man who came to us solely be- 
cause of the "good old days" in Philadelphia 
stop and beg at every other door in the house; 
that she detected one of the numerous heart- 
broken husbands hurrying back to his dying 
wife by way of the first pub round the cor- 
ner; that she caught the innocent defendant 
in a lawsuit, whose solicitor was waiting down- 
stairs, pounced upon by two women instead 
and well scolded for the poor bargain he had 
made. In vain I point out that a shilling to one 
is an invitation to every Beggar on our beat, 
for by some wireless telegraphy of their own 
our Beggars always manage to spread the news 
when shillings are in season at our chambers. 
But J. is not to be moved. He has an argu- 
ment as simple as his system with which to 
answer mine. If, he says, the Beggar is a 
humbug, a shilling can do no great harm; if 

279 



Our House 

the Beggar is genuine, it may pay for a night's 
bed or for the day's bread; and he does not 
care if it is right or wrong according to poHti- 
cal economy, for he knows for himself that the 
Beggar's story is sometimes true. The visits 
of Beggars who once came to us as friends are 
vivid in his memory. 

They are, I admit, visits not soon forgotten. 
The chance Beggar in the street is impersonal 
in his appeal, and yet he makes us uncomfort- 
able by his mere presence, symbol as he is of 
the huge and pitiless waste of life. Our laugh 
for the bare-faced impostor at our door has a 
sigh in it, for proficiency in his trade is gained 
only through suffering and degradation. But 
the laugh is lost in the sigh, the discomfort 
becomes acute when the man who begs a 
few pence is one at whose table we once sat, 
whom we once knew in positions of authority. 
He cannot be reduced to a symbol nor dis- 
posed of by generalizations. Giving is always 
an embarrassing business, but under these 
conditions it fills us with shame, nor can we 
help it though oftener than not we see that 
the shame is all ours. I am miserable during 
280 



Our Beggars 

my interviews with the journalist whom we 
met when he was at the top of the ladder of 
success, and who slipped to the bottom after 
his promotion to an important editorship and 
his carelessness in allowing himself to be found, 
on the first night of his installation, asleep with 
his head and an empty bottle in the waste- 
paper basket; but he seems to be quite en- 
joying himself, which makes it the more 
tragic, as, with hand upraised, he assures me 
solemnly that J. is a gentleman, this proud 
distinction accorded by him in return for the 
practical working of J.'s system in his behalf. 
It is a trial to receive the popular author who 
won his popularity by persevering in the 
"'abits of a clerk," so he says, when he left 
the high office stool for the comfortable chair 
in his own study, and whose face explains too 
well what he has made of it; but it is evidently 
a pleasure to him, and therefore the more 
pitiful to me, when he interrupts my mornings 
to expose the critics and their iniquity in com- 
pelling him to come to me for the bread they 
take out of his mouth. Worst of all were the 
visits of the business man, — I am glad I 

281 



Our House 

can speak of them in the past, — though he 
himself never seemed conscious of the ghastly 
figure he made, for when his visible business 
vanished he had still his wonderful schemes. 

He was a man of wonderful schemes, but 
originally they led to results as wonderful. 
When we first knew him he ruled in an office 
in Bond Street, he had partners, he had clerks, 
he had a porter in livery at the door. He em- 
barked upon daring adventures and brought 
them off. He gave interesting commissions, 
and he paid for them too, as we learned to our 
profit. He had large ideas and a wide horizon; 
he shrank from the cheap and popular, from 
what the people like. He was not above tak- 
ing the advice of others upon subjects of which 
he was broad-minded enough to understand 
and to acknowledge his own ignorance, for he 
spared himself no pains in his determination 
to secure the best. And he was full of go; that 
was why we liked him. I look back to even- 
ings when he came to dinner to talk over 
some new scheme, and when he would sit on 
and talk on after his last train — his home 
was in the suburbs — had long gone and, as 
282 



Our Beggars 

he told us afterwards, he would have to wait 
in one of the little restaurants near Fleet 
Street that are open all night for journalists 
until it was time to catch the earliest news- 
paper train. He would drop in at any odd 
hour to discuss his latest enterprise. We were 
always seeing him, and we were always de- 
lighted to see him, enthusiasm not being so 
common a virtue in the Briton that we can 
afford not to make the most of it when it hap- 
pens. We found him, as a consequence, a 
stimulating companion. I cannot say exactly 
when the change came; why it came remains 
a mystery to us to this day. Probably it be- 
gan long before we realized it. The first symp- 
toms were a trick of borrowing: at the outset 
such trivial things as a daily paper to which 
he should have subscribed, or books which he 
should have bought for himself. Then it was 
a half crown here and a half crown there, be- 
cause he had not time to go back to the office 
before rushing to the station, or because he 
had not a cab fare with him, or because of 
half a dozen other accidents as plausible. We 
might not have given a second thought to all 

283 



Our House 

this but for the rapidity with which the half 
crowns developed into five shillings, and the 
five into ten, and the ten into a sovereign on 
evenings when the cab, for which we had to 
take his word, had been waiting during the 
hours of his stay. We could not help our sus- 
picions, the more so because that indefinable 
but rank odour of drugs, by which our Beg- 
gars too frequently announce themselves, grew 
stronger as the amount of which he was in 
need increased. And very soon he was con- 
fiding to us the details of a quarrel which de- 
prived him of his partners and their capital. 
Then the Bond Street office was given up and 
his business was done in some vague rooms, 
the whereabouts of which he never disclosed; 
only too soon it seemed to be done entirely in 
the street. We would meet him at night slink- 
ing along the Strand, one of the miserable 
shadows of humanity whom the darkness lures 
out of the nameless holes and corners where 
they hide during the day. At last came a 
period when he kept away from our chambers 
altogether, sending his wife to us instead. Her 
visits were after dark, usually towards mid- 
284 



Our Beggars 

night. She called for all sorts of things, — a 
week's rent, medicine from the druggist In the 
Strand, Sunday's dinner, her 'bus fare home, 
once I remember for an umbrella. She was 
never without an excuse for the emergency that 
forced her to disturb us, and she was no less 
fine than he in keeping up the fiction that it 
was an emergency, and that business prospered 
though removed from Bond Street into the 
Unknown. I think it was after this loan of an 
umbrella that he again came himself, nomi- 
nally to return it and incidentally to borrow 
something else. I had not seen him for several 
months. It might have been years judging 
from his appearance, and I wished, as I still 
wish, I had not seen him then. In the Bond 
Street days he had the air of a man who lived 
well, and he was correct in dress, "well 
groomed" as they say. And now? His face 
was as colourless and emaciated as the faces 
from which I shrink in the "hunger line" on 
the Embankment; he wore a brown tweed suit, 
torn and mended and torn again, with a hor- 
rible patch of another colour on one knee that 
drew my eyes irresistibly to it; his straw hat 
285 



Our House 

was as burned and battered as days of tramp- 
ing in the sun and nights of sleeping in the 
rain could make it. He was the least embar- 
rassed of the two. In fact, he was not embar- 
rassed at all, but sat in the chair where so 
often he had faced me in irreproachable frock 
coat and spotless trousers, and explained as in 
the old days his wonderful schemes, express- 
ing again the hope that we would second him 
and, with him, again achieve success. He 
might have been a prince promising his pat- 
ronage. And all the while I did not know 
which way to look, so terrible was his face 
pinched and drawn with hunger, so eloquent 
that staring patch on his knee. That was 
several years ago, and it was the last visit 
either he or his wife ever made us. I cannot 
imagine that anything was left to them ex- 
cept greater misery, deeper degradation, and 
— the merciful end, which I hope came swiftly. 
It is when I remember the business man and 
our other friends, fortunately few, who have 
followed in the same path that I am unable 
to deny the force of the argument by which 
J. defends his system. It may be that all our 

286 



Our Beggars 

Beggars began life with schemes as wonderful 
and ideas as large, that their stories are as true, 
that the line between Tragedy and Farce was 
never so fine drawn as when, stepping across 
it, they plunged into the profession of having 
come down in the world. 



IX 

The Tenants 



IX 



THE TENANTS 



It is impossible to live in chambers without 
knowing something of the other tenants in 
the house. I know much even of several who 
were centuries or generations before my time, 
and I could not help it if I wanted to, for the 
London County Council has lately set up a 
plaque to their memory on our front wall. 
Not that I want to help it. I take as much 
pride in my direct descent from Pepys and 
Etty as others may in an ancestor on the May- 
flower or with the Conqueror, while if it had 
not been for J. and his interest in the matter 
we might not yet boast the plaque that gives 
us distinction in our shabby old street, though, 
to do us full justice, its list of names should 
be lengthened by at least one, perhaps the 
most distinguished. 

I have never understood why Bacon was 
left out. Only the pedant would disown so 
291 



Our House 

desirable a tenant for the poor reason that the 
house has been rebuilt since his day. As it is, 
Pepys heads the list, and we do not pretend 
to claim that the house is exactly as it was 
when he lived in it. He never saw our Adam 
ceilings and fireplaces, we never saw his row 
of gables along the River front except in Cana- 
letto's drawing of the old Watergate which 
our windows still overlook. However, except 
for the loss of the gables, the outside has 
changed little, and if the inside has been re- 
modelled beyond recognition, we make all we 
can of the Sixteenth-Century drain-pipe dis- 
covered when the London County Council, in 
the early throes of reform, ordered our plumb- 
ing to be overhauled. Their certified plumber 
made so much of it, feeling obliged to celebrate 
his discovery with beer and in his hurry forget- 
ting to blow out the bit of candle he left 
amid the laths and plaster, that if J. had not 
arrived just in time there would be no house 
now for the plaque to decorate. Pepys, I regret 
to say, waited to move in until after the Diary 
ended, so that we do not figure in its pages. 
Nor, during his tenancy, does he figure any- 

292 



The Tenants 

where except in the parish accounts, which 
is more to his credit than our entertainment. 
Etty was considerate and left a record of 
his "peace and happiness" in our chambers, 
but I have no proof that he appreciated their 
beauty. If he Hked to walk on our leads in 
the evening and watch the sun set behind West- 
minster, he turned his back on the River at 
the loveliest hour of all. It was his habit as 
Academician to work like a student at night 
in the Royal Academy Schools, then in Tra- 
falgar Square, — an admirable habit, but one 
that took him away just when he should have 
stayed. For when evening transformed the 
Thames and its banks into Whistler's "Fairy- 
land" he, like Paul Revere, hung out a lantern 
from his studio window as a signal for the 
porter, with a big stick, to come and fetch 
him and protect him from the robbers of the 
Quarter, which had not then the best of rep- 
utations. Three generations of artists climbed 
our stairs to drink tea and eat muffins with 
Etty, but they showed the same ignorance of 
the Thames, all except Turner, who thought 
there was no finer scenery on any river in 

293 



Our House 

Italy, and who wanted to capture our windows 
from Etty and make them his own, but who, 
possibly because he could not get them, never 
painted the Thames as it was and is. One other 
painter did actually capture the windows on 
the first floor, and, in the chambers that are 
now the Professor's, Stanfield manufactured 
his marines, and there too, they say, Hum- 
phry Davy made his safety lamp. 

We do not depend solely upon the past for 
our famous tenants. Some of the names which 
in my time have been gorgeously gilded inside 
our vestibule, later generations may find in 
the list we make a parade of on our outer wall. 
For a while, in the chambers just below ours, 
we had the pleasure of knowing that Mr. 
Edmund Gosse was carrying on for us the 
traditions of Bacon and Pepys. Then we have 
had a Novelist or two, whose greatness I shrink 
from putting to the test by reading their novels, 
and also one or more Actors, but fame fades 
from the mummer on the wrong side of the 
footlights. We still have the Architect who, if 
the tenants were taken at his valuation, would, 
I fancy, head our new list. 
294 



The Tenants 

He IS not only an architect but, like Etty, 
— like J. for that matter, — an Academician. 
He carries off the dignity with great stateliness, 
conscious of the vast gulf fixed between him 
and tenants with no initials after their name. 
Moreover, he belongs to that extraordinary 
generation of now elderly Academicians who 
were apparently chosen for their good looks, 
as Frederick's soldiers were for their size. The 
stoop that has come to his shoulder with years 
but adds to the impressiveness of his carriage. 
His air of superiority is a continual reminder 
of his condescension in having his office under 
our modest roof. His "Aoh, good-mornin','' 
as he passes, is a kindness, a few words from 
him a favour rarely granted, and there is no 
insolent familiar in the house who would dare 
approach him. Royalty, Archbishops, Uni- 
versity dignitaries are his clients, and it would 
seem presumption for the mere untitled to 
approach him with a commission. His office is 
run on dignified lines in keeping with the ex- 
alted sphere in which he practises. A parson 
of the Church of England is his chief assistant. 
A notice on his front door warns the unwary 

295 



Our House 

that "No Commercial Travellers need Apply," 
and Implies that others had better not. 

William Penn is probably the only creature 
in the house who ever had the courage to enter 
the Academic precincts unbidden. William 
was a cat of infinite humour, and one of his 
favourite jests was to dash out of our chambers 
and down the stairs whenever he had a chance; 
not because he wanted to escape, — he did 
not, for he loved his family as he should, — 
but because he knew that one or all of us would 
dash after him. If he was not caught in time 
he added to the jest by pushing through 
the Academician's open door and hiding some- 
where under the Academic nose, and I am cer- 
tain that nobody had a keener sense of the 
audacity of it than William himself. More 
than once a young assistant, trying to repress 
a grin and to look as serious as if he were hand- 
ing us a design for a Deanery, restored Wil- 
liam to his family; and once, on a famous 
occasion when, already late, we were starting 
for the Law Courts and the Witness-box, the 
Architect relaxed so far as to pull William out 
from among the Academic drawing-boards and 

296 



The Tenants 

to smile as he presented him to J. who was 

following in pursuit. Even Jove sometimes un- 
bends, but when Jove is a near neighbour it is 
wiser not to presume upon his unbending, and 
we have never given the Architect reason to 
regret his moment of weakness. 

Whatever the Architect thinks of himself, 
the^ other tenants think more of Mr. Square, 
whose front door faces ours on the Third Floor. 
Mr. Square is under no necessity of assuming 
an air of superiority, so patent to everybody 
in the house is his right to it. If anything, he 
shrinks from asserting himself. He had been 
in his chambers a year, coming a few months 
"after the fire," before I knew him by sight, 
though by reputation he is known to everybody 
from one end of the country to the other. Not 
only is there excitement in our house when 
the police officer appears on our staircase with 
a warrant for his arrest for murder, but the 
United Kingdom thrills and waits with us for 
the afternoon's Police Report. In the neigh- 
bourhood I am treated with almost as much 
respect as when I played a leading part in 
the Law Courts myself. The milkman and the 

297 



Our House 

postman stop me in the street, the little fruit- 
erer round the corner and the young ladies at 
the Temple of Pomona in the Strand detain 
me in giving me my change as if I were an 
accessory to the crime. What if the murder is 
only technical, Mr. Square's arrest a matter 
of form, his discharge immediate? The glory 
is in his position which makes the technical 
murder an achievement to be envied by every 
true-born Briton. For he is Referee at the 
Imperial Boxing Club, and therefore the most 
important person in the Empire, except, per- 
haps, the winning jockey at the Derby or the 
Captain of the winning Football Team. The 
Prime Minister, Royalty itself, would not shed 
a brighter lustre on our ancient house, and there 
could be no event of greater interest than the 
fatal "accident" in the ring for w^hich Mr. 
Square has been so many times held techni- 
cally responsible. 

In his private capacity Mr. Square strikes 
me as in no way remarkable. He is a medium- 
sized man with sandy hair and moustache, as 
like as two peas to the other men of medium 
height with sandy hair and moustache who 
298 



The Tenants 

are met by the thousand in the Strand. He 
shares his chambers with Mr. Savage, who is 
something in the Bankruptcy Court. Both are 
retiring and modest, they never obtrude them- 
selves, and either their domestic life is quiet 
beyond reproach, or else the old builders had 
the secret of soundless walls, for no sound from 
their chambers disturbs us. With them we 
have not so much as the undesirable intimacy 
that comes from mutual complaint, and such 
is their amiability that William, in his most 
outrageous intrusions, never roused from them 
a remonstrance. 

I am forced to admit that William was at 
times ill-advised in the hours and places he 
chose for his adventures. He often beguiled 
me at midnight upon the leads that he might 
enjoy my vain endeavours to entice him home 
with the furry monkey tied to the end of a 
string, which during the day never failed to 
bring him captive to my feet. By his mysteri- 
ous disappearances he often drove J., whose 
heart is tender and who adored him, out of his 
bed at unseemly hours and down into the 
street where, in pyjamas and slippers, and 

299 



Our House 

the door banged to behind him, he became 
an object of suspicion. On one of these occa- 
sions, a policeman materializing suddenly from 
nowhere and turning a bull's-eye on him, — 

"Have you seen a cat about?" J. asked. 

"Seen a cat? Oi've seen millions on 'em," 
said the policeman. "Wot sort o' cat?" he 
added. 

"A common tabby cat," said J. 

"Look 'ere," said the policeman, "where 
do you live any'ow?" 

"Here," said J., who had retained his pre- 
sence of mind with his latch-key. 

"Aoh, Oi begs your parding, sir," said the 
policeman. "Oi did n't see you, sir, in the 
dim light, sir, but you know, sir, there's 
billions o' tabby cats about 'ere of a night, 
sir. But if Oi find yours, sir, Oi'll fetch 'im 
'ome to you, sir. S'noight, sir. Thank e' 
sir." 

When the kitchen door was opened the 
next morning, William was discovered in- 
nocently curled up in his blanket. And yet, 
when he again disappeared at bedtime a week 
or two later, J. was again up before daybreak, 

300 



The Tenants 

sure that he was on the doorstep breaking 
his heart because he could not get in. This 
time I followed into our little hall, and Au- 
gustine after me. She was not then as used 
to our ways as she is now, and I still remember 
her sleepy bewilderment when she looked at 
J., who had varied his costume for the search 
by putting on knickerbockers and long stock- 
ings, and her appeal to me: ''Mais pour- 
quoi en bicyclette?^^ Why indeed? But there 
was no time for explanation. We were inter- 
rupted by an angry but welcome wail from be- 
hind the opposite door, and we understood that 
William v/as holding us responsible for having 
got himself locked up in Mr. Square's cham- 
bers. We had to wake up Mr. Square's old 
servant before he could be released, but it was 
not until the next morning that the full extent 
of his iniquity was revealed. A brand-new, 
pale-pink silk quilt on Mr. Square's bed having 
appealed to him as more luxurious than his 
own blanket, he had profited by Mr. Square's 
absence to spend half the night on it, leaving be- 
hind him a faint impression of his dear grimy 
little body. Even then, Mr. Square remained 

301 



Our House 

as magnanimously silent as if he shared our 
love for William and pride in his performances. 

All we know of Mr. Square and Mr. Savage, 
in addition to their fame and modesty, we 
have learned from their old man, Tom. He is 
a sailor by profession, and for long steward on 
Mr. Savage's yacht. He clings to his uniform 
in town, and when we see him pottering about 
in his blue reefer and brass buttons, Mr. 
Savage's little top floor that adjoins ours and 
opens out on the leads we share between us 
looks more than ever like a ship's quarter- 
deck. He is sociable by nature, and overflows 
with kindliness for everybody. He is always 
smiling, whatever he may be doing or wherever 
I may meet him, and he has a child's fondness 
for sweet things. He is never without a lemon- 
drop in his mouth, and he keeps his pockets 
full of candy. As often as the opportunity pre- 
sents itself, he presses handfuls upon Augus- 
tine, whom he and his wife ceremoniously call 
"Madam," and to whom he confides the secrets 
of the household. 

It is through him, by way of Augustine, 
that we follow the movements of the yacht, 

302 



The Tenants 

and know what "his gentlemen" have for 
dinner and how many people come to see them. 
At times I have feared that his confidences 
to Augustine and the tenderness of his atten- 
tions were too marked, and that his old wife, 
who is less liberal with her smiles, disapproved. 
Over the grille that separates our leads from 
his, he gossips by the hour with Augustine, 
when she lets him, and once or twice, meeting 
her in the street, he has gallantly invited her 
into a near public to "'ave a drink," an invi- 
tation which she, with French scorn for the 
British substitute of the cafe, would disdain 
to accept. To other tributes of his affection, 
however, she does not object. On summer 
evenings he sometimes lays a plate of salad 
or stewed fruit at our door, rings, runs, and 
then from out a porthole of a window by his 
front door, watches the effect when she finds 
it, and is horribly embarrassed if I find it by 
mistake. In winter his offering takes the shape 
of a British mince-pie or a slice of plum pud- 
ding, and, on a foggy morning when she comes 
home from market, he will bring her a glass 
of port from Mr. Square's cellar. He is always 

303 



Our House 

ready to lend her a little oil, or milk, or sugar, 
in an emergency. Often he is useful in a more 
urgent crisis. In a sudden thunder-storm he will 
leap over the grille, shut our door on the leads, 
and make everything ship-shape almost before 
I know it is raining. He has even broken in for 
me when I have come home late without a 
key, and by my knocking and ringing have 
roused up everybody in the whole house ex- 
cept Augustine. Mrs. Tom, much as she may 
disapprove, is as kindly in her own fashion; 
she is quite learned in medicine, and knows an 
old-fashioned remedy for every ailment. She 
has seen Augustine triumphantly through an 
accident, she has cured Marcel, Augustine's 
husband, of a quinsy, and she rather likes to 
be called upon for advice. She is full of little 
amiabilities. She never gets a supply of eggs 
fresh from the country at a reasonable price 
without giving me a chance to secure a dozen 
or so, and when her son, a fisherman, comes 
up to London, she always reserves a portion 
of his present of fish for me. I could not ask 
for kindlier neighbours, and they are the only 
friends I have made in the house. 

304 



The Tenants 

I was very near having friendship thrust 
upon me, however, by the First Floor Back, 
Mrs. Eliza Short. She is an elderly lady of 
generous proportions and flamboyant tastes, 
"gowned" elaborately by Jay and as elabo- 
rately "wigged" by Truefitt. The latest fash- 
ions and golden hair cannot conceal the rav- 
ages of time, and, as a result of her labours, 
she looks tragically like the unwilling wreck 
of a Lydia Thompson Blonde. I may be wrong; 
she may never have trod the boards, and yet 
I know of nothing save the theatre that could 
account for her appearance. The most as- 
siduous of her visitors, as I meet them on the 
stairs, is an old gentleman as carefully made 
Up in his way, an amazing little dandy, whom I 
fancy as somebody in the front row applaud- 
ing rapturously when Mrs. Eliza Short, in 
tights and golden locks, came pirouetting 
down the stage. I should have been inclined 
to weave a pretty romance about them as the 
modern edition of Philemon and Baucis if, 
knowing Mrs. Short, it did not become im- 
possible to associate romance of any kind with 
her. 

305 



Our House 

Our acquaintance was begun by my drinking 
tea in her chambers the morning "after the 
fire," of which she profited unfairly by put- 
ting me on her visiting-Hst. She was not at 
all of Montaigne's opinion that "incuriosity" 
is a soft and sound pillow to rest a well-com- 
posed head upon. On the contrary, it was evi- 
dent that for hers to rest in comfort she must 
first see every room in our chambers and ex- 
amine into all my domestic arrangements. I 
have never been exposed to such a battery 
of questions. I must say for her that she was 
more than ready to pay me in kind. Between 
her questions she gave me a vast amount of 
information for which I had no possible use. 
She told me the exact amount of her income 
and the manner of its investment. She ex- 
plained her objection to servants and her 
preference for having "somebody in" to do 
the rough work. She confided to me that she 
dealt at the Stores where she could always 
get a cold chicken and a bit of ham at a pinch, 
and the "pinch" at once presented itself to 
my mind as an occasion when the old dandy 
was to be her guest. She edified me by her 

306 



The Tenants 

habit of going to bed with the Iambs, and get- 
ting up with the larks to do her own dusting. 
The one ray of hope she allowed me was the 
fact that her winters were spent at Monte 
Carlo. She could not pass me on the stairs, 
or in the hall, or on the street, where much 
of her time was lost, without buttonholing 
me to ask on what amount of rent I was rated, 
or how much milk I took in of a morning, or 
if the butcher sent me tough meat, or other 
things that were as little her business. I posi- 
tively dreaded to go out or to come home, 
and the situation was already strained when 
Jimmy rushed to the rescue. Elia regretted 
the agreeable intimacies broken off by the dogs 
whom he loved less than their owners, but 
I found it useful to have a cat Mrs. Short 
could not endure, to break off my intimacy 
with her, and he did it so effectually that I 
could never believe it was not done on pur- 
pose. One day, when she had been out since 
ten o'clock in the morning, she returned to 
find Jimmy locked up in her chambers alone 
with her bird. That the bird was still hopping 
about its cage was to me the most mysterious 

307 



Our House 

feature in the whole affair, for Jimmy was a 
splendid sportsman. After his prowls in the 
garden he only too often left behind him a 
trail of feathers and blood-stains all the way 
up the three flights of our stairs. But if the 
bird had not escaped, Mrs. Short could hardly 
have been more furious. She demanded Jim- 
my's life, and when it was refused, insisted 
on his banishment. She threatened him with 
poison and me with exposure to the Land- 
lord. For days the Housekeeper was sent 
flying backwards and forwards between Mrs. 
Short's chambers and ours, bearing threats and 
defiances. Jimmy, who knew as well as I did 
what was going on, rejoiced, and from then 
until his untimely death never ran downstairs 
or up — and he was always running down or 
up — without stopping in front of her door, 
giving one unearthly howl, and then flying; 
and never by chance did he pay the same 
little attention to any one of the other tenants. 
Mrs. Short does not allow me to forget her. 
As her voice is deep and harsh and thunders 
through the house when she buttonholes some- 
body else, or says good-bye to a friend at her 

308 



The Tenants 

door, I hear her far more frequently than I 
care to; as she has a passion for strong scent, 
I often smell her when I do not see her at all; 
and as in the Quarter we all patronize the 
same tradesmen, I am apt to run into her not 
only on our stairs, but in the dairy, or the 
Temple of Pomona, or further afield at the 
Post Office. Then, however, we both stare 
stonily into vacancy, failing to see each other, 
and during the sixteen years since that first 
burst of confidence, we have exchanged not a 
word, not as much as a glance: an admirable 
arrangement which I owe wholly to Jimmy. 

With her neighbours on the other side of the 
hall, Mrs. Short has nothing in common ex- 
cept permanency as tenant. Her name and 
the sign of the Church League faced each other 
on the First Floor when we came to our cham- 
bers; they face each other still. Pier golden 
wig is not oftener seen on our stairs than the 
gaiters and aprons of the Bishops who rely 
upon the League for a periodical cup of tea; 
her voice is not oftener heard than the dis- 
creet whispers of the ladies who attend the 
Bishops in adoring crowds. But Jimmy's in- 

309 



Our House 

tervention was not required to maintain the 
impersonality of my relations with the League. 
It has never shown an interest in my affairs 
nor a desire to confide its own to me. Save 
for one encounter we have kept between us 
the distance which it should be the object of 
all tenants to cultivate, and I might never 
have looked upon it as more than a name 
had I not witnessed its power to attract some 
of the clergy and to enrage others. Nothing 
has happened in our house to astound me more 
than the angry passions it kindled in two of 
our friends who are clergymen. One vows 
that he will never come to see us again so long 
as to reach our chambers he must pass the 
League's door; the second reproaches us for 
having invited him, his mere presence in the 
same house being sufficient to ruin his cleri- 
cal reputation. As the League is diligently 
working for the Church of which both my 
friends are distinguished lights, I feel that in 
these matters there are fine shades beyond 
my unorthodox intelligence. It is also as- 
tounding that the League should inflame lay- 
men of no religious tendencies whatever to 

310 



The Tenants 

more violent antagonism. Friends altogether 
without the pale have taken offence at what 
they call the League's arrogance in hanging 
up its signs not only at its front door, but 
downstairs in the vestibule, and again on the 
railings without, and they destroyed promptly 
the poster it once ventured to put upon the 
stairs, assuring us that theirs was righteous 
wrath, and then, in the manner of friends, 
leaving us to face the consequences. 

For myself I bear no ill-will to the League. 
I may object to the success with which it fills 
our stairs on the days of its meetings and tea- 
parties, but I cannot turn this Into a pretext 
for quarrelling, while I can only admire the 
spirit of progress that has made It the first in 
the house to do Its spring-cleaning b}^ a vacuum 
cleaner and to set up a private letter-box. 
I can only congratulate it on the prosperity 
that has caused the overflow of Its offices Into 
the next house, and so led indirectly to the one 
personal encounter I have referred to. A few 
of the rooms were to let, and J.'s proposal to 
set up his printing-press In one of them In- 
volved us In a correspondence with the Secre- 

311 



Our House 

tary. Then I called, as by letter we were un- 
able to agree upon details. The League, with 
a display of hospitality that should put the 
Architect to shame, bids everybody enter 
without knocking. But when I accepted this 
Christian invitation, I was confronted by a 
tall, solemn-faced young man, who informed 
me that the Secretary was "engaged in prayer," 
and I got no further than the inner hall. As I 
failed to catch the Secretary in his less pro- 
fessional moments, and as his devotions did 
not soften his heart to the extent of meeting 
us halfway, we quickly resumed the usual 
impersonality of our relations. 

I cannot imagine our house without the 
Church League and Mrs. Eliza Short, the 
Architect and Mr. Square. Were their names 
to vanish from the doors where I have seen 
them for the last sixteen years, it would give 
me the same sense of insecurity as if I suddenly 
looked out of my window to a Thames run 
dry, or to a domeless city in the distance. With 
this older group of tenants, who show their 
respect for a house of venerable age and tradi- 
tions by staying in it, I think we are to be 

312 



The Tenants 

included and also the Solicitor of the Ground 
Floor Front. He has been with us a short time, 
it is true, but he succeeded our old Insurance 
Agent whom nothing save death could have 
removed, and for years before he lived no 
further away than Peter the Great's house 
across the street, where he would be still, had 
it not been torn down over his head to make 
way for the gaudy, new, grey stone building 
which foretells the beginning of the end of our 
ancient street. The Solicitor cloisters himself 
in his chambers more successfully even than 
the Architect or the Church League, and I 
have never yet laid eyes on him or detected 
a client at his door. 

I wish the same could be said of our other 
newcomers who, with rare exceptions, exhibit 
a restlessness singularly unbecoming in a house 
that has stood for centuries. In the Ground 
Floor Back change for long was continued. 
It was the home of a Theatrical Agent and his 
family, and babyish prattle filled our once si- 
lent halls; it was the office of a Music Hall 
Syndicate, and strange noises from stranger 
instruments came floating out and up our 

313 



Our House 

stairs, and blonde young ladles in towering hats 
blocked the door. Then a Newspaper Corre- 
spondent drifted in and drifted out again; and 
next a publisher piled his books in the win- 
dows, and made it look so like the shop which 
is against the rules of the house that his dis- 
appearance seemed his just reward. 

After this a Steamship Company took pos- 
session, bringing suggestions of sunshine and 
spice with the exotic names of its vessels and the 
far-away Southern ports for which they sailed, 
— bringing, too, the spirit of youth, for it em- 
ployed many young men and women whom I 
would meet in couples whispering on the stairs 
or going home at dusk hand in hand. Tender 
little idyls sprang up in our sober midst. But 
the staff of young lovers hit upon the roof as 
trys ting-place at the luncheon hour, running 
races and playing tag up there, and almost 
tumbling through our skylight. Cupid, sport- 
ing overhead with wings exchanged for hob- 
nailed boots, was unendurable, and I had to 
call in the Landlord's Agent. He is the unfor- 
tunate go-between in all the tenants' differ- 
ences and difficulties: a kind, weary, sympa- 

314 



The Tenants 

thetic man, designed by Nature for amiable, 
good-natured communication with his fellow 
men, and decreed by Fate and his calling to 
communicate with them constantly in their 
most disagreeable moods and phases. Half my 
fury evaporated at sight of his troubled face, 
and I might have endured the races and 
games of tag could I have foreseen that, al- 
most as soon as he put a stop to them, the 
Steamship Company would take its departure. 
The Professor who then came in is so ex- 
emplary a tenant that I hope there will be 
no more changes in the Ground Floor Back. 
He is a tall, ruddy, well-built man of the type 
supposed to be essentially British by those 
who have never seen the other type far more 
general in the provincial town or, nearer still, 
in the East of London. He Is of middle-age 
and should therefore have out-grown the idyl- 
lic stage, and his position as Professor at the 
University is a guarantee of sobriety and de- 
corum. I do not know what he professes, but 
I can answer for his conscientiousness in pro- 
fessing It by the regularity with which, from 
our windows, I see him of a morning crossing 

315 



Our House 

the garden below on his way to his classes. His 
household is a model of British propriety. 
He is cared for by a motherly housekeeper, an 
eminently correct man-servant, and a large 
hound of dignified demeanour and a sense of 
duty that leads him to suspect an enemy in 
everybody who passes his master's door. His 
violence in protesting against unobjectionable 
tenants like ourselves reconciles me to dis- 
pensing with a dog, especially as it ends with 
his bark. It was in his master's chambers that 
our only burglar was discovered, — a forlorn 
makeshift of a burglar who got away with 
nothing, and was in such an agony of fright 
when, in the small hours of the morning, he 
was pulled out from under the dining-room 
table, that the Professor let him go as he might 
have set free a fly found straying in his jam- 
pot. 

The Professor, as is to be expected of 
anybody so unmistakably British, cultivates 
a love for sport. I suspect him of making his 
amusements his chief business in life, as it 
is said a man should and as the Briton cer- 
tainly does. He hunts in the season, and, as 

316 



The Tenants 

he motors down to the meet, he is apt to 
put on his red coat and white breeches before 
he starts, and they give the last touch of re- 
spectabiHty to our respectable house. He is an 
ardent automobilist, and his big motor at our 
door suggests wealth as well as respectability. 
This would have brought us into close ac- 
quaintance had he had his way. Sport is sup- 
posed to make brothers of all men who believe 
in it, but from this category I must except 
J. at those anxious moments which sport does 
not spare its followers. He was preparing to 
start somewhere on his fiery motor bicycle, 
and the Professor, who had never seen one 
before, wanted to know all about it. J., deeper 
than he cared to be in carburettors and other 
mysterious matters, was not disposed to be 
instructive, and I think the Professor was 
ashamed of having been beaten in the game 
of reserve by an American, for he has made no 
further advances. His most ambitious achieve- 
ment is ballooning, to which he owes a fame 
in the Quarter only less than Mr. Square's. 
We all watch eagerly, with a feeling of pro- 
prietorship, for the balloons on the afternoons 

317 



Our House 

when balloon races and trials start from the 
Crystal Palace or Ranelagh. I have caught 
our little fruiterer in the act of pointing out 
the Professor's windows to chance customers; 
and on those days I am absorbed in the sport- 
ing columns of the afternoon paper, which, at 
other times, I pass over unread. He has now 
but to fly to complete his triumph and the 
pride of our house in him. 

Restlessness also prevails in the Second 
Floor Back, and as we are immediately above, 
we suifer the more. Hardly a tenant has re- 
mained there over a year, or a couple of years 
at most, and all in succession have developed 
a talent for interfering with our comfort. 
First, an Honourable occupied the chambers. 
His title was an unfailing satisfaction to Mrs. 
Haines, the Housekeeper, who dwelt upon 
it unctuously every time she mentioned him. 
I am not learned in Debrett and Burke and 
may not have appreciated its value, but he 
might have been Honourable ten times over 
and it would not have reconciled me to him 
as neighbour. He was quite sure, if I was not, 
that he was a great deal better than anybody 

318 



The Tenants 

else, and he had the Briton's Independent way 
of asserting it. He slammed behind him every 
door he opened, and when the stairs were 
barricaded by himself, his friends, or his par- 
cels, and we wanted to pass, he failed to see 
us as completely as if we had been Mr. Wells's 
Invisible Man. He went to the City in the 
morning and was away all day, even an Honour- 
able being sometimes compelled to pretend 
to work. But this was no relief. During his 
absence his servants availed themselves of 
the opportunity to assert their independence, 
which they did with much vigour. When they 
were not slamming doors they were singing 
h}TTins, until Mrs. Eliza Short from her cham- 
bers below and we from ours above, in accord 
the first and only time for years, joined in pro- 
test, and drove Mrs. Haines to the unpleasant 
task of remonstrating with an Honourable. 

The Honourable who had come down from 
the aristocracy was followed by a Maitre 
d'Hotel who was rapidly rising In rank, and 
was therefore under as urgent necessity to 
impress us with his importance. Adolf was 
an Anglicized German, with moustaches like 

319 



Our House 

the Kaiser's, and the swagger of a drum- 
major. He treated our house as if it was the 
dining-room under his command, locking and 
unlocking the street door, turning on and out 
the lights on the stairs at any hour that suited 
him, however inconvenient to the rest of us. 
He littered up the hall with his children and 
his children's perambulators and hobby-horses, 
just where we all had to stumble over them to 
get in or out. Nobody's taxi tooted so loud 
as his, not even the Honourable's door had 
shut with such a bang. Augustine's husband 
being also something in the same profession, 
they both despised the Adolfs for putting on 
airs though no better than themselves, while 
the Adolfs despised them for not having at- 
tained the same splendid heights, and the 
shaking of my rugs out of the back windows 
was seized upon as the excuse for open war- 
fare. Augustine said it was there they should 
be shaken according to the law in Paris, which 
she thought good enough for London. Mrs. 
Adolf protested that the shaking sent all the 
dust into her rooms. Augustine, whose Eng- 
lish is small and what there is of it not beyond 

320 



The Tenants 

reproach, called Mrs. Adolf "silly fou," which 
must have been annoying, or harangued her 
in French when Mrs. Adolf, who could not 
understand, suspected an offence in every 
word. 

Mrs. Adolf wrote to the Agent, to the Land- 
lord, to me; she declared she would summons 
me to the County Court. Between letters 
she watched at her window for the rugs, and 
there both her servant and her charwoman 
made faces at Augustine, who has a nice sense 
of justice and a temper that does not permit 
her, with Elizabeth Bennet's father, to be 
satisfied by laughing in her turn at those who 
have made sport of her. I trembled for the 
consequences. But at the critical moment, 
Adolf was promoted to the more splendid 
height of Manager and a larger salary; the 
taxi was replaced by a motor-car of his own; 
Mrs. Adolf arrayed herself in muslin and lace 
for the washtub, in nothing less elegant than 
velvet for the street, and they left our old- 
fashioned chambers for the marble halls and 
gilded gorgeousness of the modern mansion. 

Of the several tenants after the Adolfs, I 
321 



Our House 

seem to remember little save the complaints 
we interchanged. I tried my best to do as I 
would be done by and to keep out of their way, 
but accident was always throwing us together 
to our mutual indignation. There was the 
Bachelor whose atrocious cook filled our cham- 
bers with the rank odours of smoked herring 
and burnt meat, and whose deserted ladylove 
filled the stairs with lamentations. There was 
the young Married Couple into whose bath- 
tub ours overflowed. There was the Acci- 
dental Actress whose loud voice and heavy 
boots were the terror not only of our house, 
but of the street, whose telephone rang from 
morning till night, whose dog howled all 
evening when he was left alone as he usually 
was, and whose rehearsals in her rooms inter- 
rupted the work in ours with ear-piercing yells 
of "Murder" and "Villain." 

I cannot recall them all, so rapidly did they 
come and go. We began to fear that the life 
of the tenant was, as Tristram Shandy de- 
scribed the life of man, a shifting from sorrow 
to sorrow. We lived in an atmosphere of fault- 
finding, though when there was serious cause 

322 



The Tenants 

for complaint, not a murmur could be wrung 
from the tenant below or, for that matter, 
from a tenant in the house. All, like true 
Britons, refused to admit the possibility of 
interests in common, and would not stir a 
hand, however pressing the danger, so long 
as they were not disturbed. If our chambers 
reeked with smoke and the smell of burning 
wood, they accepted the information with 
calm indifference because theirs did not. Nor 
did it serve as a useful precedent if, as it hap- 
pened, smoke and smell were traced again to 
a fire, smouldering as it had been for nobody 
knew how long, in the cellar of the adjoining 
house, separated from ours only by the "party 
wall" belonging to both: that ingenious con- 
trivance of the builder for creating ill-will be- 
tween next-door neighbours. They declined 
to feel the bannisters loose under their grasp, 
or to see the wide gap opened in the same 
party wall after the fall of the roof of Charing 
Cross Station had shaken the Quarter to its 
foundations and made us believe for a moment 
that London was emulating Messina or San 
Francisco. And I must add, so characteristic 

323 



Our House 

was it, that the Agent dismissed our fears as 
idle, and that the Surveyor, sent at our request 
by the County Council, laughed us to scorn. 
But we laughed best, for we laughed last. A 
second Surveyor ordered the wall to be pulled 
down as unsafe and re-built, and the Agent 
in the end found it prudent to support the 
bannisters with iron braces. 

When, after these trials and tribulations, Mr. 
Allan took the Second Floor Back we thought 
the Millennium had come. He was a quiet man, 
employed in the morning, so we were told, in 
writing a life of Chopin, and in the evening, 
as we heard for ourselves, in playing Chopin 
divinely. The piano is an instrument calcu- 
lated to convert an otherwise harmless neigh- 
bour into a nuisance, but of him it made a de- 
light. He was waited upon by a man as quiet, 
whose consideration for the tenants went to 
the length of felt slippers in the house, who 
never slammed doors nor sang, who never 
even whistled at his work. An eternity of 
peace seemed to open out before us, but, as 
they say in novels, it was not to be. Our confi- 
dence in Mr. Allan was first shaken by what I 

324 



The Tenants 

still think an unjustified exhibition of nerves. 
One night, or rather one early morning, a ring 
at our door-bell startled us at an hour when, 
in my experience, it means either a fire or an 
American cablegram. It was therefore the 
more exasperating, on opening the door, to be 
faced by an irate little man in pyjamas and 
smoking jacket who wanted to know when we 
proposed to go to bed. Only after J.'s answer 
"when we are ready," did we know it was 
Mr. Allan by his explanation that his bed was 
under the room where we were walking about, 
that the floor was thin, and that he could not 
sleep. J. would not enter into an argument. 
He said the hour was not the most appropri- 
ate for a criticism of the construction of the 
house which, besides, was at all hours the 
Landlord's and not his affair, and Mr. Allan 
had the grace to carry his complaint no further. 
It may have occurred to him on reflection that 
it was not our fault if he had chosen a room 
to sleep in just below the room we used to sit 
and see our friends in. 

Had I borne malice, I should not have had 
to wait long for my revenge, nor to plan it 

325 



Our House 

myself. Not many days later, Mr. Allan's 
servant, watering the flowers on the open 
balcony at Mr. Allan's window, watered by 
mistake the new Paris bonnet of the lady of 
the Ground Floor Back who was coming 
home at that very minute. Under the cir- 
cumstances few women would not have lost 
their temper, but few would have been so 
prompt in action. She walked straight up- 
stairs to Mr. Allan's chambers, the wreck in 
her hand. The servant opened to her knock, 
but she insisted upon seeing the master. 

"I have come, Allan, to tell you what I 
think of the conduct of your servant," she 
said, when the master appeared. "Yes, I call 
you Allan, for I mean to talk to you as man 
to man," which she proceeded to do. 

I did not hear the talk, but it was almost a 
week before I heard the piano again. Poor 
Mr. Allan! And this proved a trifle to the 
worse humiliation he was soon to endure. 

As I sat with a book by my lamp one even- 
ing before dinner, shrieks from his chambers 
and a crash of crockery sent me rushing to 
the door and out upon the landing, with Au- 

326 



The Tenants 

gustine at my heels. Old Tom and his wife 
arrived there simultaneously, and, looking 
cautiously over the bannisters, I saw an anx- 
ious crowd looking up as cautiously from the 
hall on the Ground Floor. The shrieks de- 
veloped into curses intermingled with more 
riotous crashing of china. The Housekeeper, 
urged by the crowd below, crept all unwill- 
ing to Mr. Allan's door and knocked. The 
door was flung open, and, before she ventured 
to "beg pardon but the noise disturbed the 
other tenants," Mr. Allan's hitherto well- 
behaved servant greeted her with a volley of 
blood-curdling epithets and the smash of every 
pane of glass in the upper panel of the door, 
and down she fled again. He bolted out after 
her, but looking up and catching a glimpse of 
Tom, peacefully sucking a lemon-drop, he be- 
came so personal that Tom and his wife re- 
treated hastily, and for the first time the smile 
faded from the old man's face. In a moment's 
lull I heard Mr. Allan's voice, low and entreat- 
ing, then more curses, more crashes. I should 
not have thought there was so much glass and 
crockery to be broken in the whole house. 

327 



Our House 

Presently a policeman appeared, and then 
a second. The door was open, but the servant 
was busy finishing up the crockery. Mr. Allan 
spoke to them, and then, like; a flash, the ser- 
vant was there too. 

"I dare you to let them come in!" he yelled, 
so loud he could be heard from the top to the 
bottom of the house. , " I dare you to let them 
come in! I dare you to give me in charge! I 
dare you! I dare you!" 

And Mr. Allan did not dare, that was the 
astonishing part of it. And he never lost his 
temper. He argued with the policemen, he 
plead with the servant, while one group on 
our landing and another on the Ground Floor 
waited anxiously. The policemen did not de- 
sert us but stood guard on the Second Floor, 
which was a reassurance, until gradually the 
yells were lowered, the crashes came at longer 
intervals, and at last, I suppose in sheer ex- 
haustion, the servant relapsed into his usual 
calm, Mr. Allan "sported his oak," and I 
learned how truly an Englishman's home is 
his castle. 

The Housekeeper spent the evening on the 
328 



The Tenants 

stairs gossiping at every door. There was not 
much to learn from her. A mystery was hinted 
— many mysteries were hinted. The truth I 
do not know to this moment. I only know 
that before the seven days of our wonder were 
over, the Agent, more careworn than ever if 
that were possible, made a round of visits in 
the house, giving to each tenant an ample 
and abject apology written by Mr. Allan. At 
the end of the quarter, the Second Floor Back 
was again to let. 

We should have parted with Mr. Allan less 
light-heartedly could we have anticipated what 
was in store for us. He was no sooner gone 
than the Suffragettes came in. 

I have no quarrel on political grounds with 
the Suffragettes. Theoretically, I believe that 
women of property and position should have 
their vote and that men without should not, 
but I think it a lesser evil for women to be 
denied the vote than for the suffrage to be- 
come as universal for women as for men, and to 
grant it on any other conditions would be an 
indignity. I state the fact to explain that I 
am without prejudice. I do not argue, for, to 

329 



Our House 

tell the truth, shocking as it may be, I am not 
keen one way or the other. Life for me has 
grown crowded enough without politics, and 
years have lessened the ardour for abstract jus- 
tice that was mine when, in my youth, I wrote 
the "Life of Mary Wollstonecraft," and mili- 
tant Suffragettes as yet were not. Ours are 
of the most militant variety, and it is not their 
fault if the world by this time does not know 
what this means. Even so, on general prin- 
ciples, I should have no grievance against 
them. Every woman is free to make herself 
ridiculous, and it is none of my business if my 
neighbours choose to make a public spectacle 
of themselves by struggling in the arms of 
policemen, or going into hysterics at meetings 
where nobody wants them ; if they like to emu- 
late bad boys by throwing stones and break- 
ing windows, or if it amuses them to slap and 
whip unfortunate statesmen who, physically, 
could easily convince them of their inferiority. 
But when they make themselves a nuisance 
to me personally I draw the line. And they 
are a nuisance to me. 
They have brought pandemonium into the 
330 



The Tenants 

Quarter where once all was pleasantness and 
peace. Of old, if the postman, the milkman, 
a messenger boy, and one or two stray dogs 
and children lingered in our street, we thought 
it a crowd; since the coming of the Suffragettes, 
I have seen the same street packed solid with 
a horde of the most degenerate creatures in 
London summoned by them "to rush the 
House of Commons." They have ground their 
hurdy-gurdies at our door. Heaven knows to 
what end ; vans covered with their posters have 
obstructed our crossing; motor-cars adorned 
with their flags have missed fire and exploded 
in our street; and they have had themselves 
photographed as sandwiches on our Terrace. 
Our house is in a turmoil from morning till 
night with women charging in like a mob, or 
stealing out like conspirators. Their badges, 
their sandwich boards, their banners lie about 
in our hall, so much in everybody's way that I 
sympathized with the infuriated tenant whom 
I caught one night kicking the whole collection 
into the cellar. They talk so hard on the stairs 
that often they pass their own door and come 
on to ours, bringing Augustine from her work 

331 



Our House 

and disturbing me at mine, for she can never 
open to them without poking her head into 
my room to tell me, ^'Encore une sale Suf- 
fragette/^^ In their chambers they never stop 
chattering, and their high shrill treble pene- 
trates through the floor and reaches us up 
above. The climax came with their invasion 
of our roof. 

This roof, built "after the fire," is a mod- 
ern invention, designed for the torture of who- 
ever lives underneath. It is flat, with a beau- 
tiful view to be had among the chimney-pots 
and telephone wires ; it is so thin that a pigeon 
could not waddle across without being heard 
by us; and as it is covered with gravel, every 
sound is accompanied by a scrunching war- 
ranted to set the strongest nerves in a quiver. 
We had already been obliged to represent to 
the Agent that it was not intended for the 
Housekeeper's afternoon parties or young peo- 
ple's games of tag, that there were other, 
more suitable places where postmen could take 
a rest, or our actress recite her lines, or lovers 
do their courting amid the smuts. Our patience, 
indeed, had been so tried in one way or another 

332 



The Tenants 

that at the first sound from above, at any hour 
of the day or night, J. was giving chase to the 
trespassers, and they were retreating before 
the eloquence of his attack. It was in a corner 
of this roof, just above the studio and in among 
wood-enclosed cisterns, that the Suffragettes 
elected to send off fire-balloons, which, in some 
way best known to themselves, were to im- 
press mankind with the necessity of giving 
them the vote. The first balloon floated above 
the chimney-tops, a sheet of flame, and was 
dropping, happily into the Thames, when J., 
straight from his printing-press, in blouse, 
sleeves rolled up, arms and hands black with 
ink, a cap set sideways, was on the roof, and 
the Secretary of the Militants and a young 
man in the brown suit and red tie that de- 
note the Socialist, in their hands matches and 
spirits of wine, were flying downstairs. I was 
puzzled to account for their meekness unless 
it was that never before had they seen any- 
body so inky, never before listened to language 
so picturesque and American. J., without giv- 
ing them time to take breath, called in the 
Landlord's Agent, supported by the Landlord's 

333 



Our House 

Solicitor, and they were convinced of the policy 
of promising not to do it again. And of course 
they did. 

A week later the Prime Minister was un- 
veiling a statue, or performing some equally 
innocent function in the garden below our 
windows, when the Suffragettes, from the roofs 
of near woodsheds, demanded him through a 
megaphone to give Votes to Women. We fol- 
lowed the movement with such small zest that 
when we were first aware something out of the 
common was going on in the Quarter, the two 
heroines were already in the arms of police- 
men, where of late so much of the English- 
woman's time has been spent, and heads were 
at every window up and down our street, 
housekeepers at every door, butchers' and 
bakers' boys grouped on the sidewalk, one or 
two tradesmen's carts drawn up in the gutter, 
battalions of police round the corner. The 
women no doubt to-day boast of the per- 
formance as a bold strike for freedom, and 
recall with pride the sensation it created. 

At this point I lost sight of the conflict on 
the roof below, for, from the roof above, a bal- 

334 



The Tenants 

loon shot upwards, so high that only the angels 
could have read the message it bore. The fa- 
miliar scrunching, though strangely muffled, 
was heard, and J., again in blouse and ink, 
was up and away on a little campaign of his 
own. This time he found six women, each with 
a pair of shoes at her side and her feet drawn 
up under her, squatting In a ring behind the 
cisterns, bending over a can of spirits of wine, 
and whispering and giggling like school-girls. 

"It won't go off," they giggled, and the 
next minute all chance of its ever going off was 
gone, for J. had seized the balloon and torn 
it to tatters. 

"You have destroyed our property," shrieked 
a venerable little old lady, thin and withered, 
with many wrinkles and straggling grey hair. 

He told her that was what he had Intended 
to do. 

"But it cost ten shillings," she squeaked in 
a tremor of rage, and with an attempt at dig- 
nity, but it is as hard to be dignified, as Cor- 
poral Trim found It to be respectful, when one 
is sitting squat upon the ground. 

A younger woman, golden-haired, in big 
335 



Our House 

hat and feathers, whom the others called 
Duchess, demanded "Who are you anyhow?" 
And when I consider his costume and his 
inklness I wonder he had not been asked it 
long before. 

"You can go downstairs and find out," he 
said, "but down you go!" 

There was a moment's visible embarrass- 
ment, and they drew their stocking feet closer 
up under them. J., in whom they had left some 
few shreds of the politeness which he, as a true 
American, believes is woman's due, consid- 
erately looked the other way. As soon as 
they were able to rise up in their shoes, they 
altogether lost their heads. The Housekeeper 
and the Agent, summoned in the mean time, 
were waiting as they began to crawl down the 
straight precipitous ladder from the roof. In 
an agony of apprehension, the women clutched 
their skirts tight about them, protesting and 
scolding the while. The little old lady tried 
to escape into our chambers, one or two stood 
at the top of the stairs, cutting off all approach, 
the others would not budge from our narrow 
landing. A telegraph boy and a man with a 

336 



The Tenants 

parcel endeavoured to get past them and up to 
us, but they would not give way an inch. Finally 
in despair, J. gently collected them and pushed 
them down the stairs towards their own door. 

"We will have you arrested for assault!" 
the little old lady shrieked. 

"We charge you with assault and battery," 
the golden-haired lady re-echoed from below. 

And we heard no more, for at last, with a 
sigh of relief, J. could get to our door and shut 
out the still ascending uproar. 

But that was not the end of it. If you can 
telieve it, they were on the roof again within 
an hour, getting themselves and their mega- 
phone photographed, for the fight for freedom 
would not be half so sweet without the pub- 
licity of portraits in the press. And we were 
besieged with letters. One Suffragette wrote 
that an apology was due, — yes, J. replied, 
due to him. A second lectured him on the of- 
fence given to her "dear friend, the Duchess," 
for to become a Suffragette is not to cease to 
be a snob, and warned him that the Duchess 
— who was the golden-haired lady and may 
have had the bluest blood of England in her 

337 



Our House 

veins, but who looked more like one of the 
Gaiety girls, from whom the stock of the 
British nobility has been so largely replenished 
— and the Duke intended to consult their 
Solicitor if regret were not expressed. And 
the Landlord's Agent called, and the Land- 
lord's Solicitor followed, and a Police Inspector 
was sent from Scotland Yard for facts, — and 
he reprimanded J. for one mistake, for not 
having locked the door on the inside when they 
were out, — and the insurance people wanted 
to know about the fire-balloons, and every- 
body with any possible excuse came down upon 
us, except the police officer with the warrant 
to arrest J. for assault and battery. 

It is all over now. If the Suffragettes still 
hatch their plots under our roof, they are de- 
nied the use of it for carrying them out. They 
leave us in peace for the moment, the quiet 
which is the charm of an old house like ours 
has returned to it, and outwardly the tenants 
cultivate the repose and dignity incumbent 
upon them as the descendants of Bacon and 
Pepys and the inheritors of a great past. 



X 

The Quarter 



X 

THE QUARTER 

My Windows command the Quarter, and 
what they do not overlook, Augustine does. 

Some people might think there could not 
be much to overlook, for the Quarter is as 
quiet and secluded as the Inns of Court. 
J. is forever boasting that if he is in London 
he is not of it, and that he lives the simple 
life, with Charing Cross just round the corner. 
The ''full tide of existence" sweeps by, seldom 
overflowing into the Quarter, which is one of 
the most diflicult places in all the town to find 
for those who do not know the way. Only two 
streets lead directly into it from anywhere, 
and they lead directly nowhere out of it again; 
nor do the crowds in the near Strand as much 
as see the dirty courts and dark alleys which 
are my short cuts, much less the underground 
passages which serve the same purpose, — the 
mysterious labyrinth of carpenters' shops and 

341 



Our House 

warehouses and vast wine-cellars, grim and 
fantastic and unbelievable as Ali Baba and the 
whole Arabian Nights, burrowed under the 
Quarter and approached by tunnels, so pic- 
turesque that Gericault made a lithograph 
of one when he was in London, so murderous 
that to this day they are infested with police 
who turn a flashing bull's-eye upon you as you 
pass. Altogether, the Quarter is a "shy place" 
full of traps for the unwary. I have had 
friends, coming to see me for the first time, 
lose themselves in our underground maze; I 
have known the crowd, pouring from the 
Strand on Lord Mayor's Day, get hopelessly 
entangled in our network; as a rule, nobody 
penetrates into it except on business or by 
chance. 

But for all that, there is a good deal to see, 
and the Quarter, quiet though it may be, is 
never dull as I watch it from my high win- 
dows. To the front I look out on the Thames: 
down to St. Paul's, up to Westminster, oppo- 
site to Surrey, and, on a clear day as far as 
the hills. Trains rumble across the bridges, 
trams screech and clang along the Embank- 
342 



The Quarter 

merit, tugs, pulling their line of black barges, 
whistle and snort on the river. The tide 
brings with it the smell of the sea and, in 
winter, the great white flights of gulls. At 
night myriads of lights come out, and always, 
at all hours and all seasons, there is movement 
and life, — always I seem to feel the pulse of 
London even as I have its roar in my ears. 

To the east I look down to streets of houses 
black with London grime, still stately in their 
old-fashioned shabbiness, as old as the Eigh- 
teenth Century, which I have read somewhere 
means the beginning of the world for an 
American like myself. 

To the west I tower over a wilderness of 
chimney-pots, for our house is built on the 
edge of a hill, not very high though the Lon- 
don horse mistakes it for an Alpine pass, but 
high enough to lift our walls, on this side sheer 
and cliif-like, above an amazing collection of 
tumbled, weather-worn, red-tiled roofs, and 
crooked gables sticking out at unexpected 
angles, that date back I am not to be bullied 
by facts into saying how far, and that stretch 
away, range upon range, to loftier houses 
343 



Our House 

beyond, they in their turn over-shadowed by 
the hotels and clubs on the horizon, and in 
among them, an open space with the spire of 
St. Martin-in-the-Fields springing up out of 
it, dark by day, a white shadow by night, — 
our ghost, we call it. 

And most wonderful of all is the expanse of 
sky above and around us, instead of the tiny 
strip framed in by the narrow street which is 
the usual share of the Londoner. We could 
see the sun rise every morning behind St. 
Paul's, if we were up in time, and of course 
if there was a sun every morning in London 
to rise. Over the river, when fog and mist do 
not envelop it as in a shroud, the clouds — 
the big, low, heavy English clouds — float and 
drift and scurry and whirl and pile themselves 
into mountains with a splendour that might 
have inspired Ruskin to I do not know how 
many more chapters in " Modern Painters " had 
he lived in the Quarter. Behind our collection 
of tumbled roofs and gables awry, the sun — 
always provided there is a sun — sets with a 
dramatic gorgeousness that, if it were only 
in any remote part of the world, the Londoner 

344 



The Quarter 

would spare himself no time nor trouble to 
see, but that, because it is in London, remains 
a spectacle for us to enjoy by ourselves. And 
the wonder grows with the night, — the river, 
with its vague distances and romantic glooms 
and starlike lights, losing itself in mystery, 
and mystery lurking in the little old streets 
with their dark spectral mass of houses, 
broken by one or two spaces of flat white wall, 
and always in the distance the clubs and hotels, 
now castles and cathedrals, and the white 
tapering ghost pointing heavenward. With 
so stupendous a spectacle arranged for my 
benefit, is it any marvel that much of my time 
is spent at my windows ? And how can I help 
it if, when I am there, I see many things 
besides the beauty that lured us to the Quarter 
and keeps us in it? 

Hundreds of windows look over into mine: 
some so far off that they are mere glittering 
spots on a rampart of high walls in the day- 
light, mere dots of light at dusk; some as 
carefully curtained as if the "Drawn Blinds" 
or "Green Shutters" of romance had not 
stranger things to hide from the curious. But 
345 



Our House 

others are too near and too unveiled for what 
goes on behind them to escape the most dis- 
creet. In what does go on there is infinite 
variety, for the Quarter, like the Inns of 
Court, is let out in offices and chambers, and 
the house that shelters but one tenant is the 
exception, if indeed it exists. 

All these windows and the people I see 
through them have become as much a part 
of my view as the trains and the trams, the 
taxis and the tugs. I should think the last 
days of the Quarter were at hand if, the first 
thing in the morning, I did not find the printer 
hard at work at his window under one of the 
little gables below; or if, the last thing at night, 
I missed from the attic next door to him the 
lamp of the artist, who never gets up until 
everybody else is going to bed; or if, at any 
hour I looked over, people were not playing 
cards in the first-floor windows of the house 
painted white, or frowzy women were not 
leaning out of the little garret windows above, 
or the type-writer was not clicking hard in the 
window with the white muslin curtains and 
the pot of flowers, or the manicurist not re- 
346 



The Quarter 

ceiving her clients behind the window with 
the staring, new yellow blinds. I should regret 
even the fiery, hot-tempered, little woman who 
jumps up out of the attic window immediately 
below us, like a Jack-in-the-box, and shakes 
her fist at us every time Augustine shakes 
those unfortunate rugs which are perpetually 
getting us into trouble with our neighbours. 
I should think the picture incomplete if, of 
an evening, the diners out were to disappear 
from behind the windows of the big hotel, 
though nothing makes me more uncomfort- 
ably conscious of the "strangely mingled 
monster" that London is, than the contrast 
between them lingering over the day's fourth 
banquet, and the long black "hunger line" 
forming of a winter morning just beside Cleo- 
patra's Needle and waiting in dreary patience 
for the daily dole of bread and soup. 

I cannot imagine the Quarter without actors 
and actresses in possession of dozens of its 
windows, the attraction to them less the asso- 
ciations with Garrick than the convenient 
proximity to the principal theatres; or with- 
out the Societies, Institutes, Leagues, Bureaus, 
347 



Our House 

Companies, Associations, and I know not 
what else, that undertake the charge of every- 
thing under the sun, from ancient buildings to 
women's freedom; or without the clubs, where 
long-haired men and Liberty-gowned women 
meet to drink tea and dabble in anarchy; 
where more serious citizens propose to re- 
fashion the world and mankind, and, inci- 
dentally, British politics; where, in a word, 
philanthropists of every pattern fill the very 
air of the Quarter with reform, until my escape 
from degenerating into a reformer despite 
myself seems a daily miracle, and the sham 
Bohemianism of the one club willing to let 
the rest of the world take care of itself be- 
comes almost a virtue. 

It is probably the seclusion, the cloistral 
repose, of the Quarter that attracts the stu- 
dent and the scholar. Up at my windows, the 
busy bee would be given points in the art of 
improving each shining hour. In every direc- 
tion I turn I am so edified by the example of 
hard work that I long for the luxury of being 
shocked by idleness. 

Behind the window I look down into at 
348 



The Quarter 

right angles from the studio, the Scientist in 
white apron, surrounded by bottles and retorts 
and microscopes, industriously examines germs 
from morning till midnight, oblivious to every- 
thing outside, which for too long meant, among 
other things, showers of soft white ashes and 
evil greasy smoke and noxious odours sent by 
the germs up through his chimneys into our 
studio; nor could the polite representations 
of our Agent that he was a public nuisance 
rouse him from his indifference, since he knew 
that the smoke was not black enough to make 
him one technically. It was only when J. pro- 
tested, with an American energy effective in 
England, that the germs ceased to trouble us 
and I could bear unmoved the sight of the 
white-aproned Scientist behind his window. 

In the new house with the flat roof the 
Inventor has his office, and I am sure it is the 
great man himself I so often see walking 
gravely up and down among the chimney- 
pots, evolving and planning new wireless 
wonders; and I am as sure that the solemn 
St. Bernard who walks there too is his, and, 
in some way it is not for me to explain, part 
349 



Our House 

of the mysterious machinery connecting the 
Quarter with the rest of the world. 

Plainly visible in more rooms than one, 
bending over high drawing-tables not only 
through the day but on into the night, are 
many Architects, with whom the Quarter has 
ever been in favour since the masters who 
designed it years ago made their headquarters 
in our street, until yesterday, when the young 
man who is building the Town Hall for the 
County Council moved into it, though, had 
the County Council had its way, there would 
be no Quarter now for an Architect to have 
his office in. Architectural distinction, or 
picturesqueness, awakes in the London official 
such a desire to be rid of it that, but for the 
turning of the worm who pays the rates, our 
old streets and Adam houses would have been 
pulled down to make place for the brand-new 
municipal building which, as it is, has been 
banished out of harm's way to the other side 
of the river. 

Busier still than the Architects are the old 
men who live in the two ancient houses oppo- 
site mine, where the yellow brick just shows 
350 



The Quarter 

here and there through the centuries' grime, 
and where windows as grimy — though a 
clause in the leases of the Quarter demands 
that windows should be washed at least once 
a month — open upon little ironwork balconies 
and are draped with draggled lace-curtains, 
originally white but now black. I have no 
idea who the old men are, or what is the task 
that absorbs them. They look as ancient as the 
houses and so alike that I could not believe 
there were three of them if, every time I go 
to my dining-room window, I did not see them 
all three in their chambers, two on the third 
floor, to the left and right of me, one on the 
floor below about halfway between, — mak- 
ing, J. says, an amusing kind of pattern. 
Each lives alone, each has a little table drawn 
up to his window, and there they sit all day 
long, one on an easy leather chair, one on 
a stiff cane-bottomed chair, one on a hard 
wooden stool, — that is the only difference. 
There they are perpetually sorting and sifting 
papers from which nothing tears them away; 
there they have their midday chop and tank- 
ard of bitter served to them as they work, and 

351 



Our House 

there they snatch a few hasty minutes after- 
wards to read the day's news. They never 
go out unless it is furtively, after dark, and 
I have never failed to find them at their 
post except occasionally on Sunday morning, 
when the chairs by the tables are filled by 
their clothes instead of themselves, because, 
I fancy, the London housekeeper, who leaves 
her bed reluctantly every day in the week but 
who on that morning is not to be routed out of 
it at all, refuses to wake them or to bring them 
their breakfast. They may be solicitors, but I 
do not think so; they may be literary men, but 
I do not think that either; and, really, I should 
just as lief not be told who and what they are, 
so much more in keeping is mystery with the 
grimy old houses where their old days are spent 
in endless toiling over endless tasks. 

If the three old men are not authors, plenty 
of my other neighbours are, as they should be 
out of compliment to Bacon and Pepys, to Gar- 
rick and Topham Beauclerk, to Dr. Johnson and 
Boswell, to Rousseau and David Copperfield, 
and to any number besides who, in their differ- 
ent days, belonged to or haunted the Quarter 

352 



The Quarter 



and made it a world of memories for all who 
came after. I have authors on every side of 
me: not Chattertons undiscovered in their 
garrets, but celebrities wallowing in success, 
some of whom might be the better for neglect. 
Many a young enthusiast comes begging for 
the privilege of gazing from my windows into 
theirs. I have been assured that the walls of 
the Quarter will not hold the memorial tablets 
which we of the present generation are prepar- 
ing for their decoration. The "best sellers" are 
issued, and the Repertory Theatre nourished, 
from our midst. 

The clean-shaven man of legal aspect who 
arrives at his office over the way as regularly 
as the clock strikes ten, who leaves it as regu- 
larly at one for his lunch, and as regularly in 
the late afternoon closes up for the day, is the 
Novelist whose novels are on every bookstall 
and whose greatness is measured by the thou- 
sands and hundreds of thousands into which 
they run. He does not do us the honour of 
living in the Quarter, but comes to it simply in 
office hours, and is as scrupulously punctual as 
if his business were with briefs rather than with 

353 



Our House 

dainty trifles lighter than the lightest froth. 
No clerk could be more exact in his habits. 
Anthony Trollope was not more methodical. 
This admirable precision might cost him the 
illusions of his admirers, but to me it is invalu- 
able. For when the wind is in the wrong di- 
rection and I cannot hear Big Ben, or the fog 
falls and I cannot see St. Martin's spire, I have 
only to watch for him to know the hour, and in 
a household where no two clocks or watches 
agree as to time, the convenience is not to be 
exaggerated. 

My neighbour from the house on the river- 
front, next to Peter the Great's, who often 
drops in for a talk and whom Augustine an- 
nounces as le Monsieur du Quartier, is the 
American Dramatist, author of the play that 
was the most popular of the season last year in 
New York. I should explain, perhaps, that 
Augustine has her own names for my friends, 
and that usually her announcements require 
interpretation. For instance, few people would 
recognize my distinguished countryman, the 
Painter, in le Monsieur de la Dame qui ne 
monte jamais les escaliers, or the delightful 

354 



The Quarter 

Lady Novelist in la Demoiselle aux chats, or — 
it is wiser not to say whom in le Monsieur qui 
se gobe. But I have come to understand even 
her fine shades, and when she announces 
les Gens du Quartier, then I know it is not the 
American Dramatist, but the British Publicist 
and his wife who live in Garrick's house, and 
who add to their distinction by dining in the 
room where Garrick died. 

The red curtains a little further down the 
street belong to the enterprising Pole, who, 
from his chambers in the Quarter, edits the 
Polish Punch, a feat which I cannot help 
thinking, though I have never seen the paper, 
must be the most comic thing about it. In the 
house on one side, the author who is England's 
most distinguished Man of Letters to-day, and 
who has become great as a novelist, began life 
as an architect. From the house on the other 
side, the Poet-Patriot-Novelist of the Empire 
fired, or tried to fire, the Little Englanders with 
his own blustering, knock-you-down Imperial- 
ism, and bullied and flattered them, amused 
and abused them, called them names they 
would not have forgiven from any other man 
355 



Our House 

living and could not easily swallow from him, 
and was all the while himself so simple and 
unassuming that next to nobody knew he was 
in the Quarter until he left it. The British 
Dramatist close by, who conquers the heart of 
the sentimental British public by sentiment, 
is just as unassuming. He is rarely without a 
play on the London stage, rarely without sev- 
eral on tour. He could probably buy out every- 
body in the Quarter, except perhaps the So- 
cialist, and he can lose a little matter of sixteen 
thousand pounds or so and never miss it. But 
so seldom is he seen that you might think he 
was afraid to show himself. "You'd never 
know 'e was in the 'ouse, 'e's that quiet like. 
Why, 'e never gives no trouble to nobody," the 
Housekeeper has confided to me. He shrinks 
from putting his name on his front door, 
though by this time he must be used to its 
staring at him in huge letters from posters and 
playbills all over the world. Perhaps it is to 
give himself courage that he keeps a dog who 
is as forward as his master is retiring, and who 
is my terror. I am on speaking terms with 
most of the dogs of the Quarter, but with the 

356 



The Quarter 

Dramatist's I have never ventured to exchange 
a greeting. I happened to mention my instinc- 
tive distrust, one day, to a friend who has 
made the dog's personal acquaintance. 

"He eats kids!" was my friend's comment. 
Then he added: "You have seen dozens of 
children go up to the Dramatist's room, 
have n't you?" 

"Yes," I answered, for it was a fact. 

"Well, and have you ever seen one come 
down again?" And if you will believe it, I 
never have. 

A door or so from the Dramatist, but on the 
opposite side of the street, the Socialist's win- 
dows face mine. I cannot, with any respect for 
truth, call him unassuming; modesty is not his 
vice. It is not his ambition to hide his light 
under a bushel, — or rather a hogshead; on the 
contrary, as he would be the first to admit, it 
could not flare on too many housetops to please 
him. When I first met him, years before we 
again met in the Quarter, the world had not 
heard of him, but he was quite frank in his de- 
termination that it should, though to make it 
hear, he would have to play a continuous solo 

357 



Our House 

on his own cornet, until he impressed some- 
body else with the necessity of blowing it for 
him. Besides, he has probably never found 
other people as entertaining as himself, which 
is an excellent reason why he should not keep 
himself out of his talk and his writing, — and he 
is talking and writing all the time. His is a fa- 
miliar voice among the Fabians, on public plat- 
forms, and at private meetings, and for a very 
little while it was listened to by bewildered 
Borough Councillors. He has as many plays to 
his credit as the British Dramatist, as many 
books as the Novelist, and I recall no other 
writer who can equal him in the number and 
length of his letters to the press. As he courts, 
rather than evades, notice, I doubt if he would 
be embarrassed to learn how repeatedly I see 
him doing his hair and beard in the morning 
and putting out his lights at night, or how 
entirely I am in his confidence as to the fre- 
quency of his luncheon parties and the number 
of his guests. Were I not the soul of discretion 
I could publish his daily menu to the world, for 
his kitchen opens itself so aggressively to my 
view that I see into it as often as into my own. 

358 



The Quarter 

For that matter, I have under my inspection 
half the kitchens in the Quarter, and the things 
I witness in them might surprise or horrify- 
more than one woman who imagines herself 
mistress in her own house. I have assisted at 
the reception of guests she never invited; I 
understand, if she does not, why her gas and 
electric-light bills reach such fabulous figures; 
I could tell her what happens when her motor- 
car disappears round the corner, — for, seedy 
and down-at-heel as the Quarter may appear, 
the private motor is by no means the excep- 
tion among the natives. Only the other day, 
when the literary family, who are as unsus- 
picious as they are fond of speed, started in 
their motor for the week-end, they could have 
got no further than the suburbs before the 
cloth was laid in their dining-room, their best 
china, silver, and glass brought out, flowers, 
bottles, and siphons in place, and their cook 
at the head of their table "entertaining her 
friends to luncheon." The party were linger- 
ing over the fruit when suddenly a motor-horn 
was heard in the street. There was a look of 
horror on all their faces, one short second 

359 



Our House 

of hesitation, and then a wild leap from the 
table, and, in a flash, flowers, bottles, and 
siphons, china, glass, and silver were spirited 
away, the cloth whisked off, chairs set against 
the wall. As the dining-room door closed on 
the flying skirt of the last guest, the cook 
looked out of the window, the horn sounded 
again, and the motor was round the corner 
in the next street, for it was somebody else's, 
and the literary family did not return until 
Monday. 

The Socialist, who deals in paradox and the 
inconsequent, also has his own car. Now that 
Socialism is knocking at our doors, the car 
tooting at his, come to fetch him from his 
town house to his country house or off to the 
uttermost ends of the earth, toots reassurance 
into our hearts. Under such conditions we 
should not mind being Socialists ourselves. 
However, he does make one protest against 
Individualism in which I should not care to 
join him, for he goes shares in his personality 
and has perpetrated a double in the Quarter, — 
a long lean man, with grizzled red hair and 
beard, who is clothed in brown Jaegers, whose 

360 



The Quarter 

face has the pallor of the vegetarian, and who 
warns us of the manner of equality we may 
expect under the Socialist's regime. I dread to 
think of the complications there might be were 
the double not so considerate as to carry a 
black bag and wear knee-breeches. A glance 
at hands and legs enables us to distinguish 
one from the other and to spare both the in- 
convenience of a mistaken identity. The dou- 
ble, like the old men opposite, remains one 
of the mysteries of the Quarter. Nobody can 
explain his presence in our midst, nobody has 
ever spoken to him, nobody can say where 
he comes from with his black bag in the morn- 
ing, where he goes with it in the evening, or 
even where he stops in the Quarter. I doubt 
if the Socialist has yet, like the lovers in 
Rossetti's picture, met himself, for surely no 
amount of Socialism could bear the shock of 
the revelation that must come with the meet- 
ing. 

If many books are written in the Quarter, 
more are published from it, and the number 
increases at a rate that is fast turning it into 
a new Paternoster Row. I am surrounded by 

3^1 



Our House 

publishers: publishers who are unknown out- 
side our precincts, and publishers who are 
unknown in them save for the names on their 
signs; publishers who issue limited editions 
for the few, and publishers who apparently 
publish for nobody but themselves; and, 
just where I can keep an eye on his front door, 
the Publisher, my friend, who makes the 
Quarter a centre of travel and a household 
word wherever books are read, and uses his 
house as a training-school for young genius. 
More than one lion now roaring in London 
served an apprenticeship there; even Mr. 
Chatteron passed through it; and I am always 
encountering minor poets or budding philos- 
ophers going in or coming out, ostensibly on 
the Publisher's affairs, but really busy carry- 
ing on the Quarter's traditions and preparing 
more memorial tablets for its overladen walls. 
The Publisher and his wife live a few doors 
away, where they are generously accumulating 
fresh associations and memories for our suc- 
cessors in the Quarter. To keep open house 
for the literary men and women of the time 
is a fashion among publishers that did not go 
362 



The Quarter 

out with the Dillys and the Dodsleys, and an 
occasional Boswell would find a note-book 
handy behind the windows that open upon the 
river from the Publisher's chambers. 

Associations are being accumulated also by 
the New York Publisher, who, accompanied 
by his son, the Young Publisher, and by his 
birds, arrives every year with the first breath 
of spring. It is chiefly to artists that his house 
is open, though he gives the literary hallmark 
to the legacy of memories he will leave to the 
Quarter. I cannot understand why the artist, 
to whom our streets and our houses make a 
more eloquent appeal than to the author, has 
seldom been attracted to them since the days 
when Barry designed his decorations in the 
"grand manner" for our oldest Society's 
lecture-hall, and Angelica Kauffmann painted 
the ceiling in Peter the Great's house, or since 
the later days when Etty and Stanfield lived 
in our house. Now and then I come across 
somebody sketching our old Watergate or our 
shabby little shops and corners, but only the 
youth in the attic below has followed the ex- 
ample given by J., whose studio continues the 

363 



Our House 

exception in the Quarter: the show-place it 
ought to be for the beauty of river and sky 
framed in by the windows. 

But to make up for this neglect, as long a 
succession of artists as used to climb to Etty's 
chambers visit the New York Publisher in the 
quiet rooms with the prints on the walls and 
the windows that, for greater quiet, look away 
from our quiet streets and out upon our quieter 
backs and gables. Much good talk is heard 
there, and many good stories, and by no means 
the least good from the New York Publisher 
himself. It is strange that, loving quiet as he 
does, he should, after the British Dramatist, 
have contributed more to my disquiet than 
anybody in the Quarter: a confession for 
which I know he will think I merit his scorn. 
But the birds it is his fancy to travel with are 
monsters compared to the sparrows and 
pigeons who build their nests in the peaceful 
trees of the Quarter, and I am never at ease 
in their company. I still tremble when I recall 
the cold critical eye and threatening beak of 
his favourite magpie, nor can I think calmly 
of his raven whom, in an access of mistaken 

364 



The Quarter 

hospitality, I once invited to call with him 
upon William Penn. William had never seen 
a live bird so near him in his all too short life, 
and what with his surprise and curiosity, his 
terror and sporting instincts, he was so wrought 
up and his nerves in such a state that, al- 
though the raven was shut up safe in a cage, 
I was half afraid he would not survive the 
visit. I have heard the New York Publisher 
say of William, in his less nervous and more 
normal moments, that he was not a cat but 
a demon; the raven, in my opinion, was not 
exactly an angel. But thanks to the quality 
of our friendship, it also survived the visit and, 
in spite of monstrous birds, strengthens with 
the years. 

It is not solely from my windows that I have 
got to know the Quarter. Into my Camelot I 
can not only look, but come down, without webs 
flying out and mirrors cracking, and better 
still, I might never stir beyond its limits, and 
my daily life and domestic arrangements 
would suffer no inconvenience. The Quar- 
ter is as "self-contained" as the flats adver- 
tised by our zealous Agent who manages it. 

365 



Our House 

Every necessity and many luxuries into the 
bargain are to be had within its boundaries. 
It may resemble the Inns of Court in other 
ways, but it does not, as they do, encourage 
snobbishness by placing a taboo upon the 
tradesman. We have our own dairy, our own 
green-grocer, our own butcher, though out of 
sympathy with Augustine I do my marketing 
in Soho. At one corner our tobacconist keeps 
his shop, at another our tailor. If my drains 
go wrong I call in the local plumber; when 
I want a shelf put up or something mended I 
send for the local carpenter; I could summon 
the local builder were I inclined to make a 
present of alterations or additions to the local 
landlord. I but step across the street if I am 
in need of a Commissioner of Oaths. I go no 
further to get my type-writing done. Were my 
daily paper to fail me, the local gossip of the 
Quarter would allow me no excuse to complain 
of dearth of news ; the benevolent would exult 
in the opportunity provided for benevolence 
by our slums where the flower-girls live; the 
energetic could walk off" their energy in our 
garden where the County Council's band plays 

366 



The Quarter 

on summer evenings. There is a public for 
our loungers, and for our friends a hotel, — 
the house below the hill with the dingy yellow 
walls that are so shiny-white as I see them by 
night, kept from time immemorial by Miss 
Brown, where the lodger still lights himself to 
bed by a candle and still eats his meals in a 
Coffee Room, and where Labour Members of 
Parliament, and South Kensington officials, 
and people never to be suspected of having 
discovered the Quarter, are the most frequent 
guests. 

The Quarter has also its own population, 
so distinct from other Londoners that I am 
struck by the difference no further away than 
the other side of the Strand. Our housekeepers 
are a species apart, so are our milkmen behind 
their little carts. Our types are a local growth. 
Nowhere else in London could I meet anybody 
in the slightest like the pink-eyed, white- 
haired, dried-up little old man, with a jug in 
his hand, whom I see daily on his way to or 
from our public-house; or like the middle-aged 
dandy who stares me out of countenance as he 
saunters homeward in the afternoon, a lily or 

367 



Our House 

chrysanthemum, according to the season, in 
one hand and a brown paper bag of buns in 
the other; or like the splendid old man of 
military bearing, with well-waxed moustache 
and well-pointed beard, whose Panama hat in 
summer and fur-lined cloak in winter have 
become as much fixtures in the Quarter as our 
Adam houses or our view of the river, and who 
spends his days patrolling the Terrace in front 
of our frivolous club or going into it with 
members he happens to overtake at the front 
door, — where his nights are spent no native 
of the Quarter can say. . Nor is any other 
crowd like our crowd that collects every Sun- 
day evening as St. Martin's bells begin to ring 
for evening service, that grows larger and 
larger until streets usually empty are packed 
solid, and that melts away again before ten. 
It is made up mostly of youths to whom the 
cap is as indispensable a symbol of class as the 
silk hat further west, and young girls who run 
to elaborate hair and feathers. They have their 
conventions, which are strictly observed. One 
is to walk with arms linked; a second, to fill 
the roadway as well as the pavement, to the 

368 



The Quarter 

despair of taxicabs and cycles endeavouring 
to toot and ring a passage through; a third, 
to follow the streets that bound the Quarter 
on three sides and never to trespass Into 
others. How the custom originated, I leave It 
to the historian to decide. It may go back to 
the Britons who painted themselves blue, It 
may be no older than the Romans. All I know 
with certainty Is that the Sunday evening 
walk is a ceremony of no less obligation for 
the Quarter than the Sunday morning parade 
in the Row Is for Mayfalr. 

We are of accord In the Quarter on the sub- 
ject of its charm and the advantage of preserv- 
ing It, — though on all others we may and 
do disagree absolutely and continually fight. 
I have heard even our postman brag of the 
beauty of Its architecture and the fame of the 
architects who built it more than a century 
and a half ago, and I do not believe as a rule 
that London postmen could say who built the 
houses where they deliver their letters, or that 
it would occur to them to pose as judges of 
architecture. Because we love the Quarter we 
watch over it with unceasing vigilance. We 

369 



Our House 

are always on the look-out for nuisances and 
alert to suppress them. In fact, if not in 
name, we constitute a sort of League for the 
Prevention of Dirt and Disorder in the Quarter. 
There is a distinct understanding that, in an 
emergency, we may rely upon one another for 
mutual support, which is the easier as we all 
have the same Landlord and can make the 
same Agent's life a martyrdom until the evil 
is remedied. The one thing we guard most 
zealously is the quiet, the calm, conducive to 
work. We wage war to the death against 
street noises of every kind. No "German 
Band" would invade our silent precincts. 
The hurdy-gurdy is anathema, — I have always 
thought the Suffragettes' attempt to play it 
through our streets their bravest deed. If we 
endure the bell of the muffin man on Sunday 
and the song of the man who wants us to buy 
his blooming lavender, it is because both have 
the sanction of age. We make no other con- 
cession, and our severity extends to the native 
no less than to the alien. When, in the strip 
of green and gravel below my windows, the 
members of our frivolous Club took to shoot- 

370 



The Quarter 

ing themselves with blank cartridges in the 
intervals of fencing, though the noise was on 
the miniature scale of their pistols, we over- 
whelmed the unfortunate Agent with letters 
until a stop was put to it. When our Terri- 
torials, in their first ardour, chose our cata- 
combs for their evening bugle -practice, we 
rose as one against them. Beggars, unless 
they ring boldly at our front doors and pre- 
tend to be something else, must give up hope 
when they enter the Quarter. For if the 
philosopher thinks angels and men are in no 
danger from charity, we do not, and least of 
all the lady opposite, to whom almsgiving in 
our street is as intolerable as donkeys on the 
green were to Betsy Trotwood. One of my 
friends has never dared to come to see me, 
except by stealth, since the day she pounced 
upon him to ask him what he meant by such 
an exhibition of immorality, when all he had 
done was to drop a penny into the hand of 
a small boy at his cab-door, and all he had 
meant was a kindly fellow feeling, having 
once been a small boy himself. 
We defend the beauty of the Quarter with 
371 



Our House 

equal zeal. We do what we can to preserve 
the superannuated look which to us is a large 
part of its charm, and we cry out against every 
new house that threatens discord in our 
ancient harmony. Excitement never raged so 
high among us as when the opposite river 
banks were desecrated by the advertiser, and 
from shores hitherto but a shadow in the 
shadowy night, there flamed forth a horrid 
tout for Tea. We had endured much from a 
sign of Whiskey further down the river, — 
Whiskey and Tea are Britain's bulwarks, — 
but this was worse, for it flared and glared 
right into our faces, and the vile letters which 
were red and green one second and yellow 
the next ran in a long line from top to bottom 
of the high shot-tower. In this crude light, 
our breweries ceased to be palaces in the night, 
our campanili again became chimneys. Gone 
was our Fairyland, gone our River of Dreams. 
The falling twilight gave a hideous jog to our 
memory, and would not let us forget that we 
lived in a nation of shopkeepers. The Social- 
ist, part of whose stock-in-trade is perver- 
sity, liked it, or said he did, — and I really 

372 



The Quarter 

believe he did, — but the other tenants were 
outraged, and an Indignation meeting was 
called. Four attended, together with the Solici- 
tor and the Agent of the estate, and the Pub- 
lisher, who took the chair. It was of no use. 
We learned that our joy in the miracle of night 
might be destroyed forever, but if we could 
prove no physical harm, legal redress would 
be denied to us, and our defiance of the Vandal 
must be In vain. And so there the disgraceful 
advertisement remains, flaring and glaring de- 
fiance at us across the river. When the Social- 
ist gets tired of it, he goes off to his country 
place In his forty-horse-power motor-car, but 
we, In our weariness, can escape only to bed. 



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